


DannyMay 2020 Collection

by Cordria



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:54:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 40,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25220506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cordria/pseuds/Cordria
Summary: A collection of 31 stories from DannyMay 2020. Random lucky dip of plots and characters. See each chapter for warnings.
Comments: 39
Kudos: 50





	1. Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> What if Danny could see Blaschko's lines?

Two days after THE ACCIDENT (which was in all caps in his thoughts), when Danny’s mom first let Sam and Tucker in the house, he stumbled through a muddled question about why things were different all the sudden. But after watching the concerned expressions on their faces, Danny vowed to himself to never bring those differences up again. It wasn’t the last time he’d keep things about his new slightly-unhuman state to himself.

Pretending to be human had been simple at first. But as the days wore on, Danny got more used to his condition, and it was easy to forget how different humans were. He would check himself, just a moment too late, and have to deal with the looks from Sam and Tucker.

The worst of it - or perhaps the best of it - was his new vision. 

It was a trip to the beach about two weeks post ACCIDENT - Tucker and Sam’s latest bid to get Danny to relax just a little - that Danny noticed something off with how his friends looked. Tucker stripped off his shirt, dropping it onto the sand, and ran towards the cool water with a shout.

Danny was quite used to the idea that animals had stripes. Zebras had stripes. Tigers had strips. Ms Fitzgerald’s cat had stripes. The bugs in the backyard had stripes. Humans?

Humans didn’t have stripes. He _knew_ humans didn’t have stripes.

But Tucker... did? His back was filled with shimmering lines of color. They stretched from his sides across his back, then dipped down his spine in a V-shape.

Danny blinked, looking around at the other humans playing around on the beach. All of them did. 

Humans… had… stripes... now. “Freaky,” he whispered.

“You okay?” Sam asked. 

He blinked at her. “Yeah,” he said after a moment - unconvincingly, if her expression was any sort of clue - and plastered a smile on his face. “I’m good.”

She studied him a moment longer before shrugging and following Tucker. No doubt to talk to him about the latest odd thing Danny had done. Danny knew they were keeping a list. He wondered how long it was.

Now that he’d noticed the stripes, he could see them on Sam too, curling down her legs. And on the arms of the people who still wore street clothes. He stood there, arms crossed over his chest, uncertain about this latest development. It wasn’t like there was anything he could do about it.

He slowly stretched out one of his own arms, studying it, not quite sure how he’d missed this. For two weeks! But as he turned his arm in the sun, he couldn’t see anything. No stripes. No shimmering lines of that not-color.

He... didn’t... have stripes.

Perhaps that made sense, in a way. It wasn’t like he was human anymore. 

The thought made his teeth tingle.

“Come on, Danny!” came a shout. Danny wasn’t paying enough attention to know who it’d come from.

In a sure-fire bet to get thoughts out of his brain for a while, Danny raced across the warm sand and jumped into the cold water. 

“Danny!” Sam shrieked, holding up her hands to stop the huge splash of water from getting her too wet. She laughed a moment, then narrowed her eyes a little. “You forgot to take your shirt off,” she scolded.

Danny grinned at her. He didn’t care about the wet clothes. “You sounded like your mom there.”

She swept off her hat and bopped him on the head with it. “Crossed a line, there.”

She had stripes on her face too - they seemed to glow in the sun, now that her hat was off. They were… cute. Maybe humans having stripes wasn’t that bad.

Settling the hat back on her head made the stripes fade, and that’s when Danny noticed the slightly uncomfortable expression on her face. He realized he had an odd smile - no doubt a reaction from the stripes - and he wiped it from his face.

“Ooooh,” Tucker crooned, swimming up beside him, “do I detect a little bit of a crush on the boy’s face? And perhaps a little too much blushing on the girl’s? What is this latest development?”

Danny and Sam turned on Tucker with an almost simultaneous, “Stop it, Tucker.”

Tucker’s last word before he was tackled and half-drowned was, “Lovebirds!”

Over the next few days, Danny spent hours upon hours researching eyes, going deep down wikipedia black holes, reading dusty encyclopedias from the attic, even checking out a book on ophthalmology from the library. It hadn’t taken long for him to understand the why and the how of his new vision - it wasn’t like he was dumb.

He appeared to (somehow) had more rods in his eyes than a normal human, making his night vision pretty incredible. Figuring he could see about as well as a cat at night, Google informed him that would mean he had six to eight times more rod cells than normal.

The night vision was cool. Even Sam and Tucker thought so, the first time Tucker caught Danny forgetting to turn on the lights before starting his homework at ten at night, or when he pointed out the bats flying overhead to Sam when they walked home from a late movie.

The old encyclopedia has also hinted that he had more cones in his eyes than Sam and Tucker. Instead of the usual three - which he still seemed to have, since he wasn’t missing any colors - he had four, or perhaps more. He could see new colors that didn’t exist before. Shimmering shades that humans had no words for. _Ultraviolet_ , was the word Danny eventually learned to attach to these colors.

Which led up to today, the accident nearly two years in the past and no longer in all caps in his mind, when Danny was lying on a blanket at the park. Sam was lying next to him, having fallen asleep in the warm sun. By this point, he’d nearly forgotten how different humans saw the world - and it was jarring when he was reminded of it. 

When he was running his finger over the faint stripes going down the length of her arm, she stirred and glanced at him. “You feel like a bug,” she murmured.

“Hmm,” Danny said. “Problems with that? I thought you liked bugs.”

“Not when they wake me up,” she said, pulling her arm out of his reach and sitting up with a yawn. “What were you doing?”

“Tracing your stripes.”

“My what?” She studied her arm before giving him a confused look.

Danny, abruptly remembering she couldn’t see that particular color, waved his hand dismissively. “Never mind.”

Sam scooted closer - nearly into his lap - and thrust her arm in front of his face. “Tell me.” 

“Sam, it’s nothing,” Danny tried, but Sam’s face was set. Sam and Tucker had long since realized he saw the world a bit different than them. They didn’t usually call him on his oddness anymore, Danny figured it was because he was useless at explaining, but now and then Sam dug in her heels. He sighed and pushed her arm away, pulling out his phone.

“Don’t pretend to ignore me-” Sam started, but stopped when Danny handed her his phone. It was open to a website about the invisible lines that covered humans, only visible in the ultraviolet spectrum. “Oh,” she muttered. 

Danny wiggled his fingers, silently asking for his phone back. He grinned at her when she plunked it back against his palm. “You wanted to know.”

“I didn’t really want to know I have stripes,” she muttered, climbing to her feet.

“But they’re cute!” Danny said. He got up too, snagging the blanket in his arms. “It’s like a kitten with stripes-” Realizing he’d probably gone just a touch too far by comparing her to a kitten, Danny started towards the edge of the park.

He felt her catch up to him and yank the blanket out of his hands. “You’re wrinkling it,” she fussed, expertly folding the blanket as she walked. Her cheeks had a red tinge to them, and didn’t comment on what Danny had said.

“Wrinkling it?” Danny questioned, counting himself lucky for once. “It’s a blanket that was spread out on the grass!”

“What color is it?” Sam asked.

“Is what?” Danny grabbed the blanket back, holding it with one hand and snagging her hand with his other. 

“The blanket, idiot.”

He glanced down at it. “Blue…?”

Sam twisted her lips. “So just a normal blanket.”

He grinned at her. “Hey! It’s a _special_ blanket. It matches my eyes.”


	2. Flowers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> One of Maddie's old college friends is a botanist with some interesting flowers.

Danny skulked into his house through the back door with the intent of avoiding his parents. He’d had an extremely wonderful day thus far - no homework, no ghosts, a decent grade on his math test, and even a compliment from his science teacher on the project they were working on - and he had zero desire to run into someone who could ruin his winning streak with a reminder about chores. 

It was for nothing, as his mother was sitting at the kitchen table. Danny’s shoulders drooped. 

“Hi Sweetie,” she said. “How was school?”

“Fine,” Danny muttered, toeing off his shoes and dropping his bag near the door. “I’m going to-” he stopped, realizing there was someone else at the table with his mother. He blinked at the strange woman. “Hello.”

The woman had a kind smile with large dimples, an oversized nose, and a large black curly hairstyle. She also looked vaguely familiar. “Hello.”

“Danny, this is Katie. She and I were good friends in college.”

It clicked in Danny’s mind. The woman was in a lot of his mother’s pictures from college. “Hi,” he repeated. Taking advantage of the fact that his mother was chatting up an old friend (although ‘friend from college’ made the little hairs on his neck stand on it - that phrase never seemed to bode well), Danny edged around the table with the idea of vanishing up to his room.

“She’s a botanist,” his mother continued, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Danny wanted to not be here. “Katie was just passing through after picking up some specimens, but she’s agreed to stay for a while and help me with an experiment I have going. She had a unique idea for it.”

“Sounds fun,” Danny said. He was nearly out of the kitchen.

“She’ll be staying in Jazz’s room.”

Danny hesitated. Having another scientist actually in their house meant he’d have to be careful to toe the line for a few days. “Okay…”

“Can you clean Jazz’s room a little before you relax?” His mother sent him a smile. “Make sure there’s nothing lying around?”

“Oh, Maddie,” the woman said, waving her hand, “I can do a bit of cleaning. I just appreciate the offer! Let the young man go do his thing after a long day.”

Danny was about to nod and agree with that sentiment, when he remembered Jazz sucked at hiding things. Like notebooks and photo albums full of secret-breaking information. “Ah… I can clean. Jazz is a neat freak anyways, it’ll only take a minute.” 

“That’s sweet of you.” Katie sent him a huge smile. “Thank you.”

“New sheets and things too, please,” his mother added. “I know Jazz keeps her room clean, but it’s been almost a month since someone was in there. They’ll smell dusty.”

Danny waved his hand and took the chance to escape the kitchen. He trotted up the stairs, sending a quick text to Tucker that he’d be late logging into their game.

Jazz’s door was the second on the left, and the door was already open, a suitcase sitting on the bed and a coat draped on the desk chair. Danny felt something odd at seeing these strange things in his sister’s room, but he shrugged it off and glanced around. He knew about the notebook and the photo album. Now where did she hide them?

Poking around at the books on the bookshelf, Danny noticed what looked like a glass suitcase sitting on the ground. Pausing in his search for the notebook, he knelt down and studied what was inside. The glass was tinted, like sunglass lenses, and the objects inside were blurred and hard to see. They looked something like plants. Which made sense, since the woman was a botanist. Kinda weird, though, keeping them in such an odd container.

Danny left the plants to continue searching for anything secret-revealing, spending nearly fifteen minutes and not finding anything. “Perhaps she’s better at hiding things than I thought,” he muttered, slinking to the hall closet and getting a new set of sheets. “Or maybe she brought them to college.” It took only a few minutes to get the new sheets on the bed, new covers on the pillows, and to dump Jazz’s in the laundry. He lingered a few more minutes, eyes drifting over the room, trying to think of anywhere else things could have been hidden.

Feeling confident his secret wouldn’t be revealed, Danny headed towards his room. Tucker was waiting.

“Danny!”

He stopped, one foot in his room, and let his head fall back. He debated pretending not to hear his mother’s call. Twenty more seconds and his noise-cancelling headphones would have been on and he’d be surrounded by the sounds of an alien world. But his conscience tugged at him. “What?” he yelled.

“Need your help for a moment!”

He groaned, twisted on his heel, and slumped down the steps. Making sure every hint of his body screamed ‘I don’t want to be here’, Danny slunk back into the kitchen. “What?” he asked.

The kitchen table was now covered in paper. Graphs and charts and pages full of numbers were everywhere. His mother looked up with a grin, seemingly oblivious to his posture. “Katie has a terrarium up in Jazz’s room. Can you grab it please? And then, down in the lab, we’ll need some equipment. The portable lab kit will do, I think.”

Really? Danny thought as he headed back upstairs. Couldn’t do this yourself? 

But after those couple annoyed thoughts, he did start to wonder what was in the terrarium that they’d need the porta-lab. Slipping back into Jazz’s room, he knelt down next to the terrarium and studied it a little closer. 

There were five plants inside. They weren’t potted like a normal plant - their roots were dangling in the air, and the plants were suspended in the middle of the terrarium by glass rods. Two looked something like orchids, one looked like some sort of vine, and the other two looked like tiny trees. They looked like very normal plants, other than the lack of soil. 

He shrugged and grabbed the terrarium, hauling it downstairs. “Here,” he said, setting it on top of the mess of papers. 

“Thank you!” Katie chimed, reaching forwards and pulling it closer. 

In a hurry to get back to Tucker and his game, Danny took the stairs to the basement two at a time. The portal was humming calmly. He headed straight to the self where the porta-lab was kept, snagged it, and headed back up the stairs. It joined the terrarium on the table.

The glass door was open and Katie and his mother were peering inside. Despite the desire to run upstairs and get into his afternoon fun, Danny lingered, curious.

His mother dug through the lab supplies, pulled out a huge pair of gloves, and handed them over to Katie. “Perfect,” the woman whispered, reaching into the terrarium with gloved hands, and slowly releasing one of the plants from the glass rods holding it in place, and pulling it out of the terrarium.

Danny felt himself tensing, waiting for something bad to happen. Maybe it was a ghost flower, like those blood blossoms. There had to be a reason for the lab supplies and the strange, tinted glass. It’d be just his sort of luck, too, after such a good day.

But it was a normal plant. Six long green leaves. Limp white roots dangling from Katie’s gloved fingers. A small but pretty white flower hanging from a stem.

Danny was almost disappointed. “What is it?” he asked.

“ _Dendrobium pacificum florid_ ,” Katie said with a smile. “A rare and quite expensive orchid.”

“It’s just a plant,” Danny said.

Katie glanced at him. “What were you expecting?”

Danny sent his mother a confused glance. “You’re doing a project… on a normal plant? No ghost… anything?”

Katie laughed. “Ghosts? Are you still on that, Maddie? Jack and Vlad too, I suppose.” 

Maddie’s smile twisted into a small frown. “There’s potential-”

“Yes, yes,” Katie interrupted. “I heard all about it many times in college. God, it’s hard to believe you three never gave that pet theory up.”

Danny could see his mother’s hackles rise. “It’s not really a pet theory anymore, if you’d follow the news.”

“Of course, dear,” Katie said, her smile indulgent. Then she turned to Danny, ignoring the look on Maddie’s face. “And we’re not doing an experiment on the plant. We’re doing an experiment on it’s genetics.”

Still with a frown on her face, Maddie nodded. “Vlad sent-”

Every muscle in Danny’s body tensed.

“-along some rather interesting data he _said_ he’d collected and Katie’s an expert in biogenetic engineering, especially when it comes to plants. We’re hoping to see if we can recreate some of… _this_ ,” she waved her hands at the messy stack of papers, “in a plant.”

“Uh-huh,” Danny said, trying not to sound too interested. But with Vlad involved, he needed to know what this experiment was about. “What are you trying to get the plants to do? Grow fangs and attack Da... uh… someone?”

Katie laughed. “No. We’re trying to translate a unique bioluminescent trait into the plant. Like what a firefly uses to glow.”

“A… glowing plant?” Danny asked.

His mother sent him a tight smile. “Yes.”

Danny looked down at the porta-lab, at the ghost equipment and the beakers that still had traces of glowing ectoplasm clinging to them and the sensors, and put two and two together in his mind. “Will this glowing plant be able to… float?”

Katie leaned forwards. “Floating is impossible, but the bioluminescent trait caused some sort of odd gravitropism. It was the interesting part of Vlad’s research, one of the reasons I agreed to this.”

Danny blinked, glancing at his mother in hopes of a translation. 

Maddie’s smile was sharp. “It’s a bioluminescent plant with odd gravitropism, Danny. Not a glowing plant that floats, of course. Ghosts are a… silly _pet theory._ ” 

“Ah,” Danny said.

“I’m more interested in studying the gravitropism to be honest,” Katie said, turning the plant around and around in her hands. “Bioluminescence has been done before, of course. This plant has just the right sort of genetics for what I’m seeing in this data. Fortunately it’s flowering. Unfortunately, it’s such a slow grower it’ll be years before the pollen and ovules we’re modifying will be large enough plants for good study.” 

“Think about it,” Maddie said, leaning forwards and poking a finger at the papers, “a way to create organisms, living beings, with… _bioluminescent and odd gravitropism_.”

Danny didn’t particularly want to think about it. He didn’t want his mother figuring out how to create plants that could glow and float. A half-ghost plant. He felt the hair raise on his neck at the idea of his mother realizing that a half-living, half-ghost creature was possible. 

Surely Vlad didn’t want her to either. What was the man thinking?

“I’m going to… go,” Danny said. “You guys play with your plants.”

He ducked out of the kitchen, pulling his phone out of his pocket as he headed up the stairs. He went through his blocked number list, found the one he wanted, and hit ‘call’. “Hi, Vlad,” Danny said when the phone picked up.

“I’m busy, Little Badger.”

“What’s with the data my mom’s looking through?”

Vlad scoffed. “Merely theoretical information. I’m hoping she can help me solve an _instability_ issue I’m working through.”

“Theoretical, huh?” Danny slumped into his room and shut the door. “You’re not planning on her using any of that information?”

“Maddie doesn’t have the skill, interest, or technology to actually do anything with the data I sent her. It’s not even the complete set of data. I’m just using her analytical skills to find a mistake. It’s harmless, Daniel.”

“You remember Katie, from college?”

“No.” A pause, then, “The flower girl? Black hair, big nose?”

“You mean the botanical biogenetic engineer? Yes, that one. She’s sitting at my kitchen table, looking through your ‘ _merely theoretical information_ ’ and planning an experiment with my mom.”

There wasn’t a response to that.

“Hello?” Danny said after a long thirty seconds of silence. He pulled the phone away from his face, realizing he’d been disconnected. He couldn’t help but smile. “Well. That was rude.”

When the doorbell rang just a few minutes later, Danny glanced out the window to see Vlad’s limo double-parked outside. Setting his headphones over his ears, he finally logged into his game. It’d certainly be interesting to watch Vlad try to talk the information back out of his mother’s hands, but Danny was ready to tune out the world and play his game.


	3. Reflection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No Warnings.
> 
> Valerie is introspective as she looks in a mirror.

Valerie quietly set her backpack down, closed the door gently behind her, and held her breath for a moment. At the sound of her father’s snores through the thin apartment walls, she let out a relieved sigh. She’d made it home from school before he’d woken up.

Tip-toeing over to his phone, still plugged into the charger, she sneaked a peek. One voice mail, two missed calls - neither from the school. Her shoulders relaxed the rest of the way; the teachers must have bought her excuses enough to not call home. It was something of a miracle after the day she’d had.

She slipped into the kitchen, avoiding the worst of the squeaking boards, and made herself a snack: a thick coating of peanut butter on crunchy toast with sliced bananas. She focused on the little movements of her fingers and hands, careful not to think of anything else. When one piece was done and sitting on the plate, looking lonely, she made herself a second and third peanut butter and banana sandwich. Taking her sandwiches to her room, she closed the door behind her and locked it, dropping onto her bed.

She’d made it.

What a hard day. Thankfully her father worked this evening, so all she would have to get through is a couple of stilted minutes of conversation. The rest she would have to herself.

Whatever _herself_ was anymore.

She forced the thought out of her mind and took bites of her food, studiously ignoring the mirror in the corner of her room. It was amazing how hungry she’d been today. She’d purchased three extra lunches, and it still hadn’t felt like enough. 

The sandwiches were gone far too fast, and she stared longingly at the plate for a few moments before setting it down, running her fingers through her hair, and risking a glance upwards. 

She had to deal with it. No use putting it off any longer.

Her reflection gazed back - exhausted looking and pale - and not herself anymore. In the mirror her eyes gleamed an inhuman red, blood-like metal pooled and flowed over her in crazy patterns, and a hazy red aura seemed to glow from her skin. Valerie glanced down at herself - looking normal when not a reflection in the mirror. 

“Stop,” she informed the mirror, her voice hoarse from a rollercoaster of an emotional day, and her freaky reflection copied her perfectly. “Get away from me.”

Fear and anger spiked at the sight, and Valerie caught herself too late. Something inside her reacted to the emotions. It felt like ants running around inside her bones and tunneling through her muscles. The metal - before only visible in the mirror - seeped out of her skin and into reality. It oozed in crazy patterns before settling into plates of armor that shone red. Fitted close to her body, the metal formed a strange solid that bent and flexed without thought as she moved.

“No,” she whispered. Closing her eyes, she tried to wish the metal away again. This was the eighth time this had happened today - although it was the first time she didn’t have to race to get out of a classroom full of people before the metal appeared on her skin, and the first time she wasn’t hiding in a dark closet or dirty bathroom stall, trying to get the armor to go away.

She just needed to calm down. She knew it would go away when she relaxed, if she took a few deep breaths, if she could get her emotions to settle.

Outside her room, a door creaked. Her father was awake. 

Her breath caught in her throat. There was no way she could let her dad catch her like this. He would… he would… she had no idea what he would do. Possibly keel over from a heart attack. Disown her for being subhuman. Turn her over to the government for testing.

Her mind running through the list of horrible outcomes made dismantling the suit impossible. She groaned and flung herself backwards on her bed. “Stupid ghost. What did you do to me?”

She hadn’t thought through the consequences last night, when that ghost - the technology one with the mullet and the odd speech patterns - had cursed her with this new suit. It had been a blessing in the moment, a way to defeat a ghost, a way to protect a friend. Now, unfortunately, the consequences far outweighed the benefits.

“You home, Valerie?” came her father’s call.

Valerie flinched, a gun appearing on her arm in the moment of panic. She glanced over at the door to make sure she’d locked it. “Yes!” she shouted, putting a hand over the gun to make sure it didn’t fire, “I… have a headache. I’m going to take a nap.”

She could see her father’s shadow under the crack in the door. “You want me to bring you anything?”

“No. I already made a snack. Thanks though.”

“I’ll be home about three in the morning. I’ll try to keep quiet.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Valerie called, watching carefully as his shadow vanished. She stayed on her bed, pretending to be napping, as she listened to him tinker in the kitchen, take a shower, and head out the door. It wasn’t until the apartment was quiet and she was positive she was alone, that she relaxed.

The armor started to recede with the feel of ants running around through her muscles, pooling along her skin before sinking in and vanishing. She closed her eyes and threw her arms over her face with a groan. “What am I going to do?” 

She must have fallen asleep lying there, because the next time she glanced over at her clock it was nearly eight at night. She stirred, her mouth feeling dry and mothy, and stretched.

Carefully pushing herself out of bed, she glanced over at the mirror. Her skin still crawled with the strange metal. Her eyes still glowed an eerie, almost ghostly red. It felt almost like a muscle in her brain tightened at the sight, and ants started stirring inside her bones. 

“Nope,” she whispered, turning to stare at a spot in the carpet, doing her best to stop the endless parade of thoughts. “Stop.” But if she’d still been at her old house, it wouldn’t have had stains in the carpet. And she wasn’t at her old house because her father lost his job. And he lost his job because-

She closed her eyes and jerked her thoughts out of that pattern.

Warm red metal pooled in her hand, ready to be formed into whatever she wanted. A gun, a glove, a capturing device. Valerie stared at it, startled that she’d stopped the transformation for once. “I can do this?” she whispered.

Then she clenched her fist, the metal oozing out from between her fingertips to form swirling patterns across the back of her hand. “I can do this!” The metal sunk back into her skin.

“I can do this,” she breathed, deliberately turning to the mirror to stare her monstrous reflection straight in the eyes. Ants crawled around in her stomach. 

“Watch me.”


	4. Science

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Danny and Tucker are working on a science project.

“What… _the_ _hell_ … are you doing?” Sam asked, pausing next to the boys at the park.

“Science,” Danny answered seriously. He had a notebook in his lap open to a page filled with some sort of data table, a pencil behind his ear, ectoplasm stains on his shirt, and surrounded by dozens of little blob ghosts. They crawled across his lap, played in the grass, and climbed his shirt. From far away, it almost looked like he was playing with kittens. Glowing, headless kittens.

Sam looked around. Nobody seemed to be paying attention to what was going on. The boys had chosen a spot near the trees where they were surrounded by small hills, making them hard to spot from far away. But still. “Science?” she asked.

“For sure,” Tucker said. He was lounging a half-dozen feet away from the ghost pile, holding the Fenton Thermos in his hands and blinking up at her with a confused look on his face. “Don’t you have a science project to do?”

“Yes,” Sam said, dragging the word out, still trying to figure out what was going on. “But…” She looked around again. How was nobody noticing this?

“But what?” Danny grinned at her, snatching up one of the blob ghosts that was trying to chew on his ear and holding it out to her. “Want one?”

Sam set down her backpack on the grass and knelt down, a cautious distance away from the ghosts, ready to get up and run at a moment’s notice. “No.”

“That’s too bad. It’s a cute one,” Danny said, tickling the little ghost. The blob curled up into a tighter ball at the touch, then started sending out little tentacles to curl around his finger.

After a few seconds of silence, Sam shook her head. “I still don’t get it. What are you doing?”

“I told you,” Danny said, “science. Our project.”

Sam turned to Tucker with a blank look. Danny often made odd mental leaps of logic when it came to ghosts that he couldn’t explain - likely something to do with his partly-ghost status - and perhaps this was one of those times.

“Oh, come on Sam, your class got the project too,” Tucker said. “We all have to run an experiment, right? Collect and analyze data?” He gestured towards Danny. “That’s what we’re doing.”

“You’re in the park, with ghosts, running a science experiment?”

“Yes,” Danny said. “That’s what I said.”

Sam was quiet. “How did you guys end up partners anyway? We got assigned partners.”

“Chocolate,” Danny said, leaning forwards with a grin that had a little too much ghostly sharpness to it. No doubt his eyes would be glowing green if they weren’t in such bright sunlight. “Two extra-large bars. And an explanation that we wanted to do _this_ , of course, and why it couldn’t be someone else.”

“I still don’t know what _this_ is!” Sam said.

“It’s our science experiment!” Danny shot back. “We’ve said that now, like, three times.”

Sam sighed and let it drop, pretty convinced she wasn’t going to get an answer. Tucker cocked his head at her, and she just waved her hand. “You do your… whatever. I’ll watch.”

“Trial four,” Danny said, pulling his pencil out from behind his ear and writing in his notebook. “Ready?”

Tucker hoisted the Thermos. “Ready.” The end of the Thermos glowed an eerie green. 

With a movement that was a bit too quick for a human, Danny snatched one of the blob ghosts and tossed it into the air. “One.” Tucker activated the Thermos when the ghost was at the top of the arc, pulling it in. Danny marked on his paper. “Two,” he said, throwing another blob ghost. Again it was pulled in, the paper was marked, and the process was repeated over and over.

Sam slowly sat down, crossing her legs and allowing herself to relax. It was hard with all the ghosts around. Now and then she glanced around, but nobody seemed to be aware of what they were doing.

“Eleven,” Danny called, hiking the ghost into the air. Tucker pulled it into the Thermos, and the device let out a beep. “And… it’s full.” Danny wrote on his paper, still covered in several dozen ghosts. He frowned. “I really thought this thing would hold more.”

“I thought you knew how much the Thermos held,” Sam asked.

“Yeah, I have a rough guess,” Danny said with a shrug. “But does it hold the same amount each time? And how does the power level of the ghost affect it? And,” he dug around in a backpack, shooing little ghosts away, “then we have _this_.” He pulled out a new Thermos. This one was quite a bit smaller and had a black and white color scheme, instead of the normal grey and green.

“What’s that?” Sam held out her hand.

Danny tossed it to her. “My parents built it. Fenton Thermos version… something. Four, I think. I want to see if it holds more.”

Sam turned it around in her hands. It was several inches shorter, and the radius was nearly half what the original was. “It’s cute,” she said. “Does it work?”

“Of course it works,” Danny said, wiggling his fingers in a request for it back. Sam tossed it to him. “My parents built it.”

“How much does the original one hold?” 

“Eleven level one ghosts this time,” Danny said. “147 GEUs.”

Sam wasn’t going to ask. She didn’t want to go back down the black hole path of her first question. But it came out anyways. “GEUs?”

“Ghost energy units,” Danny said. “I made it up. Sounds scientific, doesn’t it?”

Sam nodded. “Why…?”

“See,” Danny said, “the first time we ran this experiment, it held twelve ghosts. The second time it held only eight. I couldn’t figure out why there was such a difference. So _obviously_ we needed a unit of measurement that was smaller than ‘ghosts’.”

“Obviously,” Tucker added, “like we didn’t have to email the teacher and ask what to do.”

Danny grinned at him. “And _obviously_ there’s no existing unit for something smaller than ‘ghost’-”

“Obviously,” Tucker inserted, “like we didn’t call your parents and ask.”

Danny waved the other boy off, “So I made one up. I went through all the ghosts, and gave them numbers based on how much power they have. See,” he snatched up two ghosts. “These are both level one ghosts - technically - but this one,” he shook the ghost in his right hand, “is twice as powerful as this one,” he gestured towards his left hand. “So I decided that this one,” he held up the right ghost again, “will have 6 GEUs and the other will have 12.”

“He’s condensing hours and hours and hours of trial and error here,” Tucker added. “We started this a week ago. We’re on the sixth run-through of this.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “And all without my knowledge.”

Danny nodded. “Yes, Ms Save The Earth Club. All without your knowledge.”

“You digging on my club?” Sam asked with a scowl.

“Of course not,” Danny said quickly. “But you’re missing the cute ghosts, trying to clean up a creek nobody seems to care about.”

“Cute,” Tucker muttered, “is an opinion.”

Danny frowned at him. “And that is why they don’t like you.”

“Yes, it’s got nothing to do with the fact that I’m sucking them into a Thermos.”

“And people care about the creek,” Sam said as Tucker reversed the Thermos and dumped the blobs back into Danny’s lab. “I had seven people show up today; we got another hundred feet clean. The creek’s important, and the word is getting out.” She sighed. “It _would_ help if you two would show up.”

“Science project,” the two chimed at the same time. 

Sam shook her head and leaned back. “Maybe next time.”

“Maybe,” Tucker said. He turned to Danny. “Are we getting consistent data this time?”

“Pretty close,” Danny said, sticking the end of his pencil in his mouth and pushing a few of the blob ghosts off his notebook. “This was 147 GEUs. The last time was 148. Time before that was 146.” He frowned down at the paper. “According to my mom, theoretically, the Thermos should hold exactly the same amount each time. So either her theory is wrong-”

“Well _that_ never happens,” Tucker inserted sarcastically.

“-or we don’t have small enough units.” Danny’s mouth twisted. “Maybe we should reorganize the unit measurement and start over. Maybe...” He wrote something in his notebook.

“We’ve been doing this for a week,” Tucker said. “I vote against starting over. We’re getting good enough data for this project.”

Danny hesitated. 

Sam smirked. “You’re too like your mom. Got a thought in your brain and don’t want to give it up until it’s perfect.”

Danny scowled at her, pulling a ghost blob off his shoulder. “Am not. I just think if we did it… one more… time…” he trailed off, realizing his mother had said something similar a hundred times in his life - usually as an answer to the question of why supper wasn’t ready yet. The scowl turned into a dark frown. “Fine. You win that one.”

“So let’s wrap this up,” Tucker said, “and go catch a movie. We can do all the data analysis in class.”

It took Danny a few more seconds of staring down at his paper to say, “Okay. But let’s do the other thermos before we get going. If I followed my mom’s explanation about compression ratios and programming, this new Thermos should hold the same number of ghosts, even though it’s smaller.”

“Ghost energy units,” Tucker corrected.

“Well, yeah.” Danny said. “Catch.” He threw the new black and white Thermos at Tucker. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Tucker said. He positioned the new Thermos in his hands and thumbed the switch. The end glowed.

Danny hefted the first blob into the air. “One,” he called as it was sucked in.

“Why’d your parents change the colors on the Thermos, anyways?” Sam asked, leaning back on her hand and watching, mostly wondering how Danny had managed to smuggle several dozen ghosts to the park without being noticed.

“Maybe they think it looks cooler,” Danny said. “Two!” he called, lobbing another blob in the air.

Sam arched an eyebrow. “Your dad thinks Phantom’s color scheme is cooler than the Fenton color scheme? Really?”

Tucker glanced down at the Thermos. It was mostly black, with white highlights here and there. Then he glanced at Danny. “She’s got a point.”

Danny picked up a third ghost, but hesitated. “Maybe… they realized Phantom was just going to steal it and they didn’t want Phantom carrying around their tech.”

“So now you’re going with your dad doesn’t want the word ‘Fenton’ on everything, and all the free advertising Phantom gives them,” Sam said, watching Danny stroke the little ghost like it was a puppy. “That sounds like him too.”

“Look, I don’t know what goes through my parents’ minds,” Danny scowled. “Can we finish this and go watch our movie?” 

Sam hummed and watched Danny toss ghost after ghost into the air. 

Eleven. Then fifteen. Then twenty-one.

Danny hesitated. “Um… we’re way above the capacity of the old one.”

“I thought you said it’d hold about the same,” Tucker said.

“I thought that’s what she said.” Danny frowned. “Give me the new Thermos for a moment.”

Tucker handed it over. 

Danny studied it for a few minutes, twisting and turning it in his hands. Then he floated into the air and pointed the Thermos at the ground. It sucked up all the remaining blob ghosts at once.

“You still have one on your back,” Sam pointed out.

Twisting around, Danny snagged it, then held it in his hand and sucked it in. “What do you know, it holds all the little ghosts. Neat.” His feet settled back on the ground. “I suppose that makes ghost hunting easier.”

“Movie?” Tucker said, walking over and grabbing the notebook and stuffing it into his backpack.

“That’s my notebook,” Danny said, reaching for it.

Tucker pulled the bag out of Danny’s reach. “Like I’d trust you with a week’s worth of _my_ data. You’d let a ghost eat it.”

“I wouldn’t _let_ it,” Danny muttered, “but you may have a point.”

Sam got to her feet and snatched the new Thermos out of Danny’s hands. It was warm. “So we’re just going to ignore the color change to the tech your parents gave you.”

Danny shrugged. “For now.”

Tucker nodded and added, “We’ll figure it out later. Right now, it’s movie time.”

The two boys set off across the park and Sam trailed behind, studying the Thermos. Then she sighed and slung the strap over her shoulder, jogging to catch up with her friends. There was a new movie she’d been wanting to see - she just had to con the two boys into going with her.


	5. Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: minor language.
> 
> Sally Effords (OC) shows up as a temp for FentonWorks.

“ _Don’t step into the moon_ ,” was the cryptic message left by her predecessor, scrawled on the paperwork.

“Great help,” Sally Effords muttered as she stepped out of her car and looked up at the building her temp agency had contracted her out to. She stopped. “Oh, _shit_ , no.”

The whole street was residential - including this… house? - but it stood out like a sore thumb in the morning sunshine. Gadgets and things-she-had-no-name-for stuck out everywhere from the two story brick home. Some strange sort of craft perched on top, and a huge sign hung into the street. Code violations obvious everywhere. 

Too bad she wasn’t working for the city anymore. She’d gotten paid by the violation. She’d have made two month’s rent on his place.

She glanced down at the paperwork, pointlessly rechecking the address. “Hate my job sometimes,” she whispered before hiking up her skirt and walking up the front steps of this monstrosity. “Secretarial work my ass.” She knocked. Perhaps nobody would answer the door and she could go back and find something else.

For the longest time, nobody did answer. 

She raised her hand to try knocking again when the door was wrenched open. An impressively large man was standing there, his bulk covered in some sort of bright orange overalls, a weird glowing headset over his eyes, and a thick head of gray hair. He filled the doorway, and was a half-step too close for comfort. “What?”

“Ballast sent me to fill your secretary job?” Sally asked, raising her chin and refusing to take even the smallest step backwards. She’d been employed by weirdos before, and this job offered a stellar bonus for making it through a week. “Sally Effords.” She held out her hand.

The man pushed back the headset. Handsome pale blue eyes were framed by an honest, open face and a pleasant smile. “A new one! MADS WE GOT A NEW ONE!” he shouted.

Sally set her jaw at the bone-rattling shout. “Yes,” she said, uncertain what else to say. She’d certainly been expecting a handshake, or a welcome, or something beyond a shout that woke up the entire neighborhood. 

A woman appeared in the small space left by the man’s bulk. She was in blue coveralls, gray peppering her red hair, with a pleased smile that was very like the man’s. “Excellent, Jack, but you could welcome her inside instead of making her stand in the street.”

A little knot in Sally’s stomach relaxed slightly. At least one of her new employers was normal-ish. She set the lady a smile. “Sally Effords,” she introduced herself, holding out a hand.

The woman didn’t shake her hand either. “Come on in,” the woman said. “I’m Maddie. Maddie Fenton. This is my husband, Jack.”

Sally let her hand fall to her side with a mental shrug. Perhaps it was a cultural thing. She stepped inside, trying to survey her surroundings without looking nosy. It was a living room, kitchen visible through a doorway, stairs that led up to a second floor. “Ballast said you were in need of a secretary.”

“Yes,” Maddie said. “Our business is in the basement, and I’m afraid the three of us are just lousy at paperwork. DANNY!” Her voice went from pleasant to a shout in a heartbeat. Sally had to fight down a flinch.

“What?” came a new voice from right next to her.

Sally did flinch this time. She was quite observant, had looked around, and there were only the two people nearby seconds ago. She glanced to her left, spotting a twenty-something man leaning against a wall. He had black hair that was longer than the typical male, a lean build, and normal clothing. How had she not seen him there? 

“She clean?” Jack asked.

“Obviously,” the younger man - Danny? - drawled. “She got in the house without setting off _everything_.” He smiled at her, blue eyes almost glowing. “Danny,” he said, holding out his hand for a handshake. “Are you enjoying meeting my parents?”

Sally shook his hand. “Quite.”

“It’s a pretty average FentonWorks greeting,” Danny said. “They don’t stand much on normal behavior.”

Maddie laughed. “We’re plenty normal, Danny.”

“ _Plenty_ ,” Danny agreed, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Why don’t you show Sally the lab?”

“Yes,” Jack piped in, heading through the living room and towards the kitchen. Maddie was a few steps behind, talking about some sort of project they had going on.

Sally lingered near the door, wondering if she was expected to remove her shoes. She turned to ask Danny, but the man was gone. She spun in a little circle, convinced she hadn’t heard him head up the stairs or through the door, and knowing he hadn’t followed his parents. “Creepy,” she whispered, and kept her shoes on. 

Through the normal - if a bit outdated - living room was a kitchen that was similarly outdated, and quite a bit more beat up. Cabinet doors weren’t closed properly. Several drawers had long scratches. The table looked like it had been fixed several times by someone who didn’t quite know what they were doing.

She heard her new employers talking through an orange door. Sally walked over and found stairs leading down into a basement. “Okay,” she whispered, hesitating. She wasn’t quite sure she wanted to head downstairs in this odd home. But she squared her shoulders and set her feet on the stairs.

The basement was lit with bright fluorescent lights. Shelving units lined most of the walls, and tables were scattered everywhere. Some sort of freaky closet was along the back wall, with round doors and hazard lights around it. Electronic bits and bobs were everywhere, wires and things scattered across the tables and shelves, and a general sense of haphazardness everywhere. 

“This is your desk,” Maddie said, pointing to the table closest to the stairs. Unlike the other tables, this one was covered in papers. A phone and computer was barely visible behind the stacks. “Jack and I work over there,” she gestured with a hand towards the other tables, “and Danny over there.” She pointed towards a spot on the other side of the stairs, a smaller table that was noticeably cleaner than everywhere else. 

Sally blinked, spotting the younger man already sitting in a chair. He gave her a little wave. How had he gotten down here so fast? Was there a back way down?

“So, yes,” Maddie said, walking over to the paper-covered table and studying it with her hands on her hips. “I suppose the first thing you’ll need to do is organize it. The last one left in a bit of a hurry...” She dug through the piles, pulling out a random piece of paper and holding it out.

Sally took it, glancing down at it. A basic listing of secretarial duties with almost no detail. ‘Answer the phone’ was on there, but nothing about the standard greeting for the business or where to route calls that came through or how to take memos. Her mouth twisted. Businesses like this set up temps for failure. 

She now understood the nice bonus for making it through a week. This place was a kooky disaster. “Sounds like a plan,” she said, aiming for a brisk and business-like tone and giving the woman a smile.

Maddie smiled back, that same open and honest expression she’d had before. “Jack and I will be over there. Yell if you need us.”

Sally nodded. ‘Yell’ was likely not an overstatement. Then she turned to the table, studying it. Organization was one of her talents - it’s why she loved the library jobs. She cracked her knuckles, wishing she had chosen something a bit more practical than a pencil skirt and heels to wear today. She’d know better for tomorrow. First things first, figure out what she was organizing.

Halfway through cleaning off the table, sorting the papers into a dozen stacks on the floor and debating whether or not ‘by date’ or ‘alphabetical’ would be a more logical sorting system, she glanced over at her new employers. The two elder Fentons were busy tinkering one something-or-other. The younger Fenton was doing something on his computer.

So far, the people were kooky and the house was weird and full of odd hazards she would have to start making a list of, but the job seemed relatively standard. Why had they run through two dozen temps in just three months?

Her mouth twisted into a frown as she picked up another bit of paper. Perhaps she should have done a little more research on this business before she arrived. The paperwork had made it seem like a scientific company that did research and development for the government. 

“How’s it going?”

Sally flinched, glancing over her shoulder. The young man was standing next to her, studying the piles she was making. She hadn’t heard him walk over - he was an impressively quiet walker wearing those thick boots on the hard floor. “This is quite a stack of papers,” she said.

Danny laughed and crouched down, picking up one of the stacks and flicking through it. “My parents collect a few things. Paperwork seems to be one of them.” He set the papers down where he’d found them, then picked up a different stack with a blanch. “Is this really a whole stack of warning letters from the city?”

“Yes.” Sally watched the disbelief settle onto the man’s face. “Didn’t you know you were getting them?”

“Not really,” Danny muttered, setting them down and moving on to a new pile. “It’ll be really nice to have this organized and in some sort of working order. My parents waste a ton of money each year because of _this_ ,” he gestured towards the mess. 

“Can’t get a stable secretary?”

“Can’t convince my dad we need one.” Danny shot her a smile. “My mom’s on board. She hates answering the phone and doing paperwork. My dad still thinks he’s handling it just fine.”

Sally had to fight to keep the expression on her face bland - this mess certainly wasn’t _just fine_ , but she wasn’t going to offer negatives against her boss on the first day. “I enjoy organizing, so this works for me,” she said.

Danny chuckled. “That good.” Then an odd expression settled on his face. “Do you have any idea what we do here?”

“Not particularly. It’s a private R&D company for the government, according to the paperwork.”

His head tipped to the side. “You live in Amity Park and you’ve never heard of FentonWorks?”

Feeling like it was some sort of trick question, Sally hesitated. But the smile on his face was polite and nice, and so she answered honestly. “No.”

He nodded slowly, the smile growing. “Excellent.” 

“Why do you ask?”

“You’re the first person we’ve hired that’s… actually done work.”

Sally blinked up at him. “What?”

“Well, there were a couple that pretended. And there was the one that, I think, was actually going to work but she wouldn’t step foot in the lab. But the rest? Nah. They just straight-up were trying to steal stuff.”

Sally glanced around. Wires. Gadgets. “Why?”

Danny shrugged, then pointed at the piece of paper in her hand. “Like that. Next-generation, million-dollar patent.”

She glanced down at the paper she’d picked up. It was the third or forth such piece of paper she’d found. Sure enough, it was a patent. “Million-dollar?” she repeated, trying to not sound doubtful.

“There’s people that would pay you a hundred thousand bucks if you’d just slip that into your bag and bring it home.” Danny’s eyes glittered, like he was holding back laughter. “I’m surprised none of them stopped you on the way here and offered.”

“Are you actually being serious, or tugging my leg?”

“Nah, honestly.” A shoulder went up and down. “My parents don’t give one little rip about it. They used to, but they’ve made so much from their government contracts that they’ve stopped paying attention.”

Sally thought about the broken, out of style house she’d walked through to get here, still skeptical about the man’s claims. 

“Yeah, all they care about is this lab,” Danny said, seemingly following her train of thought. “The upstairs is simply a place they sleep, and sometimes eat.”

“Oh.” Sally set down the patent - perhaps a little more carefully than before - and studied the piles of paper. If the young man was being honest, this paperwork was worth tens of millions of dollars. Still thinking about all that money, she absently asked, “Do you think they’d like it organized alphabetical or by date?”

Danny broke out laughing, a genuinely happy sound that made the other two Fentons pause and look over. “I don’t think they have any idea what either of those are. Organization is an alien concept for them. You decide.”

“I can do that. I might need some containers for all this, otherwise it’ll just get messy again.”

He stood up and grabbed the phone, turned the receiver over, and pulled off something taped to the bottom. It was a credit card. He held it out to her. “Maybe take a long lunch break. Stop at the store and get what you think is best.”

“Uh…” Sally stared at him. She’d worked here for a few hours, and he was handing her a credit card already? The credit card was a shiny silver, with ‘FentonWorks’ listed on it. “How much-”

“It’s got a quarter million dollar credit limit,” the man said with a grin. “Spend what you want. Don’t go nuts, but get something that’ll last. Avoid the dollar stores. It goes back under the phone when you’re done. Unless you have a better plan so it doesn’t get lost.” With that, he walked away, stopping next to the strange, lighted closet. “I’ll be back in a bit,” he told his parents. “Gonna go grab a friend.”

“Yup,” Jack said, waving a hand. “I’ll save some lunch for you.”

He glanced at her, smiled, and pushed a button. The doors of the closet opened on their own - but it was no closet behind the doors. It was a mass of swirling gas that seemed to glow like the full moon on a dark night.

“Don’t step into the moon?” she whispered, remembering the odd comment scrawled on her paperwork. “What is that?” And assuming his story was true, what had her predecessor tried to steal from inside the closet?

The young man took a large step backwards and vanished into the mist. The doors of the closet slowly closed behind him. 

Sally waited, watching, wondering what in the world was with the doors and the weird moon-shine gas behind it. When nothing happened, she shook her head and went back to sorting through the paperwork. Alphabetical she decided, nodding to herself. She glanced at the credit card, wondering if this whole thing was some sort of joke. She’d try it out at lunch, just to see.

She was mentally planning through what she’d get - she had a bit of a knack for design, after all - when the closet doors swooshed open again. She looked up into the shine, and two somethings stepped out of the moon. One resolved itself into Danny Fenton. Then other…

Papers fluttered from her nerveless fingers, as she suddenly put together the name FentonWorks and the local news she’d read about over the last decade. “Oh my,” she whispered. “Oh... _shit.”_


	6. Stuck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: quarantine story
> 
> Danny is trapped in his home and bored.

“You have to rescue me,” Danny whispered into his phone.

“I can’t,” Sam said back. She sounded like she was lounging in her room, barely paying attention to the call. “We’ve been over that, like, fifteen times in the last week.”

“Come on,” Danny moaned, keeping his voice down so his parents wouldn’t hear him. “I’ve been trapped in this house for two weeks straight. I’m going to go evil and kill everyone pretty soon.”

“Pretty sure you won’t,” Sam answered. “Do you think I should organize my plants by name today?”

Danny groaned and threw himself onto his bed. “I don’t care about your plants, Sam. I care more about the fact that my parents are going to start experimenting on me soon.”

Sam let out a snort. “They promised to only experiment on you with your permission.”

“I’m going to _give_ them permission soon,” Danny muttered.

There was a laugh. “That’s sort of your own problem, isn’t it?” Sam sighed. “It’s for your own good, ghost-boy.”

“I’ve got a 50% chance of being immune to the virus,” Danny shot back.

“And a 50% chance that you’re insanely susceptible to it, and the majority opinion is that you can’t risk ending up in a hospital.”

“You’re not helping much,” Danny said.

Sam hummed. “Do you want some friendly advice, or do you prefer to continue venting while I paint my fingernails?”

Danny scowled and hung up. “I wanted someone to break me out of this house,” he told his phone. He tossed the phone onto his pillows and stuffed his hands behind his head, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars glued to his ceiling. “I love my parents, just not in the 24-7 sort of way.”

“DANNY!”

Danny flinched and debated not hearing the yell. It sounded like it had come from all the way in the basement. But ignoring it would mean his mother coming up here to check on him. And that would mean her entering the room he hadn’t cleaned in nearly two weeks. And that would… be bad. Forgot-to-change-the-ectofiltrator bad. “WHAT?”

“COME HERE!”

With a groan, Danny rolled off his bed and phased straight through the floor. He landed quietly behind his mother in the lab, watching her tinker at a table. “What?” he asked.

She jumped and twisted around. “Oh, there you are. Come help me with this.”

“I will if I can go to Tucker’s house.” Danny crossed his fingers behind his back, hoping.

“No, Sweetie. We’ve been over this.” She turned back around. “Now-”

“But Tucker’s family has been quarantined for _two weeks_ ,” Danny said. “That’s what they say-”

“Sweetheart,” Maddie breathed, pushing her goggles up onto her forehead and pulling Danny into a hug. “I know this is tough, but it’s just not safe. We don’t know for sure that two weeks is enough. And we can’t risk you ending up in a hospital.”

Danny’s shoulders dropped. “I… I just…”

Her chin rested on his head. “I can’t imagine,” she whispered, “what it must be like for you. You’re used to getting to go anywhere, and now you’re stuck at home.”

Danny closed his eyes and leaned into his mother’s warmth. 

“It’ll be over soon. You just need to be patient.”

“It’d help if I had that new game,” Danny muttered.

Maddie scoffed. “Oh you.” She pushed him away a bit and ruffled his hair. “I suppose Tucker will need a copy too.”

“Well, it’d be boring to play by _myself_ ,” Danny said.

“If you help me with my experiment, perhaps we can talk about ordering a copy for you. And Tucker.”

“Fine,” Danny said, slumping into a chair. “What are we doing?”

“We’re testing a new filter medium. I’ll get done twice as fast with your help.” She pulled over several beakers of glowing goo and a box of something that looked like foam.

“Why can’t Dad do this with you?” 

“You’re the one moaning about being bored.” She nudged him with her elbow. “He’s doing his needlepoint.” She handed him a stopwatch and set a bit of the foam on top of an empty beaker. “Time how long it takes 50 ml to filter through.”

“I’m not convinced this is a real experiment,” Danny muttered, but dumped ectoplasm on top of the foam and clicked the stopwatch. He sighed and rested his chin on his arms. “But I guess it’s better than being stuck in my room.”


	7. Second Chances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Maddie goes to Clockwork in an attempt to be a better parent.

Unlike popular opinion, Clockwork wasn’t the master of all time. Just the 50,000,317 most likely ones. And he didn’t really know which of those times would happen - he was just very skilled at statistics and probability.

And, being the master of time, he knew that in only 47 of those fifty-million-or-so futures does this particular person show up at his front door right now. That gave the knock at his door only a 0.000094% chance of happening.

Which explains why he wasn’t waiting for her.

Clockwork pulled open the door to glare at the human woman. She was dressed in a blue protective outfit, some sort of jetpack on her back, and a weapon dangling loosely from her hand. 

“I would like your help,” Maddie Fenton said without introducing herself.

He ran a tongue over his teeth. Of the 47 futures where this happened, only four of them turned out for the best. 8.5%. Statistically bad enough odds it wasn’t worth engaging in conversation. “No.” He floated backwards, intent on shutting the door and sending the woman home.

The weapon came up, whirring up a charge and glowing dangerously. “Let me rephrase it, then. You’re going to help me.”

Clockwork raised an eyebrow and shifted his form to his sixteen-year-old self, intentionally parroting her son’s age. One blast from her weapon would hurt, but it certainly wouldn’t cause permanent damage. He would have just continued to close the door, but in one of the 47 futures, she was pushed to violence and it ended with the utter destruction of the infinite realms. Even a 2% chance of that happening was too high. “Very well,” he said, releasing the door. He would appease her for now. “Come in, Mrs Fenton.”

Maddie let the charge in the weapon fade away and she stepped inside, glancing around. He wondered if she found all the clocks and ticking noises as off-putting as her son did. He prodded at his lair, turning up the volume.

“What is it you need help with?” he asked, as if he didn’t know. In 46 of those 47 universes, she came here for the same thing.

“I need to go back in time. Back to the accident.”

Clockwork rested his weight on his staff and shifted to an older age. He didn’t bother to ask which accident. The goal was to talk her out of this, not bore himself. “Why?”

Her shoulders dropped. “I can’t… sleep.”

He hummed and waited.

“... Just… knowing what he went through by himself. It hurts too much.” Even through the mask on her face, she looked to be in pain. 

A human mother, driven to violence for the sake of her child, was a dangerous thing. Clockwork narrowed his eyes and felt his fingers tighten on his staff. Hopefully he would not have to destroy the woman to protect against that chance of oblivion. Daniel would not take it well. “And you want to go back and stop it from happening?”

Maddie shook her head. “I want to be there for him.” 

He cocked his head, wordlessly asking her to continue. 

“I’ve thought this through a dozen times. _More_.” She spoke slowly and thoughtfully. “I don’t think I can take this from him. This is who he is, and he’s better for it. _Everyone_ is better for it.” She was quiet for a moment. “But he doesn’t have to do it alone. I can be there for him.” Her words picked up speed and confidence. “I can be home, be there for him for once instead of out chasing some ghost that wasn’t there. I can be the one that finds him instead of his friends. I can… I can be a good mother for once.”

“You are a good mother,” Clockwork assured her.

“No, I’m not,” she scowled. “The last month has made that incredibly clear. But I could be.”

Clockwork drummed his fingers on his staff. This conversation had narrowed down the 47 possible universes to 22. That meant 18.2% of those turned out well, including one that was a wonderful potential future. “Interesting,” he murmured, changing his mind about shooing the woman away. 

“What is?” She blinked at him.

“This.” He turned and headed up a set of stairs, confident the woman would follow. 

“You’ll do it? You’ll send me back?”

Clockwork hummed noncommittally, shifting his form again, aiming for the visage of a wise old man. He floated along in silence until he reached the center of his lair, surrounded by ticking cogs and twirling bits of wheels and dials. The rhythmic sound thrummed through the air, making everything vibrate. He closed his eyes, enjoying the feel, before he glanced back at his human visitor.

The woman was clearly not enjoying it. Her hands were over her helmet, obviously trying to press hands against her ears, and he could see her eyes scrunched together in pain. 

Clockwork let everything tick a few more times before he gestured with his staff, bringing everything to a stop. The quiet _hurt_ , almost like he imagined a human heart attack would hurt. But it was ignorable, wouldn’t cause him lasting damage, and would allow for this conversation to happen. “Come here.”

Still blinking back tears, Maddie stepped forwards, studying the swirling green gases. He knew she didn’t have the eyes necessary to make out the 50 million odd futures shifting endlessly in the gas - he tightened his fingers on his staff, bringing one of those futures to the front. 

It was a horrible potential future. Danny was nineteen and had lost his mind. A large swath of both worlds was destroyed. 

Clockwork didn’t watch the scene. He watched the woman. 

She stepped closer, studying the images, slowly raising her hands to her mouth. “That’s the future?” she whispered.

“That’s one of several possible futures,” he said, “if you go through with your plan.”

“So I make it worse.” Her hands fell to her side, her eyes closing, tears slipping down her cheeks. 

He hummed and shifted the future. One she should recognize. It happened today, just a few hours ago - only in a different time stream. This Danny wasn’t sitting at the table with a black eye and broken arm, looking defeated and exhausted and picking at his supper. This one looked happy and vibrant, with a humorous twist to his grin. “This is possible too.”

Maddie watched for a very long time. “Why did you show this to me?”

“So you understand.” Clockwork shifted through futures in the gases, pausing each for a second so she could see them. Although he showed her a mix of bad futures and good ones, the bad was much more common. “Any of these are possible. We are already in a time stream that is one of the best outcomes. You going back might assuage your pain, but it doesn’t necessarily help your son.”

She sank to her knees, staring blankly at the shifting futures.

“If you do this, you have a much greater chance of making the future worse than making it better.”

“You want me to just go home,” she said quietly.

“It would be the safest outcome,” Clockwork said. The best possible outcome appeared on the screen again - a carefree young man with a strong support system. Clockwork leaned on his staff, studying the future, feeling it out. Dark Dan didn’t exist in this time stream. The New War wasn’t hovering on the horizon; instead there loomed a powerful king that would bring in a new age of peace and prosperity for the infinite realms. He cut his eyes over to Maddie Fenton. “But not the best.”

Maddie stared at the screen, tears still lingering on her cheeks behind the protective helmet. He could almost feel her longing for that image to be true. For her son to not be lying in his bed right now, in pain and feeling utterly alone.

“You can build a relationship out of the past we have. You can repair some of the damage that’s been done.” 

“But I’ll never have that,” she whispered, unable to tear her eyes away from the carefree smile on the young hybrid’s face.

“No,” Clockwork agreed. 

She was very quiet. Time wasn’t passing and Clockwork was infinitely patient. It was important that she made the right decision, and he was willing to wait. He aged his form a bit more, feeling his back curl, his beard lengthen, his knobby fingers clinging to the staff to hold himself upright.

“What’s the difference?” she asked, finally looking over at him and pointing towards the screen. “What’s the difference between that one and the bad ones? If I went back, how do I make sure that happens?”

“You’re the difference,” Clockwork said, “and you alone. Your choices. Your love. Your acceptance.” He tipped his head. “Your stability, your rationality, your rules, your respect. The balance you choose to strike between his freedom and boundaries parents must place upon youth.” He let his hold on the screen relax, and it started to shift between possibilities again.

She laughed, a soft disbelieving sound. “So it’s all on me.”

Clockwork arched an eyebrow. “You came to me. What else did you expect?”

“I’m not sure,” she whispered. “Can you tell me? Can you tell me what to change?”

“The difference comes in a million little choices you would make every day. It’s not one thing.” Clockwork tipped his head. “Will you risk it? Will you risk this,” he froze the image on utter destruction, “for a chance at this?” he sent it back to the best possible future. “Or will you go home, play it safe, and build a life out of the decisions you’ve already made?”

He watched her get back to her feet and take an uncertain step forward, reach out a gloved hand, and touch the smiling image of her son. “I…”

Clockwork felt the future shift. The probabilities change. 

“I will,” she breathed. “I’ll risk it. I can be a better mother. I know it.”

“Very well.” He nudged the swirling mass with his staff, and it resolved into an image of the Fenton basement laboratory a bit more than two years previously. The portal was silent and dark. “The future rests on you.”

Maddie gave an uncertain chuckle. “No pressure, huh?”

“Just the fate of two entire worlds,” Clockwork agreed. The back end of his staff caught her knees, sending her stumbling forward through the portal. “Choose wisely. Time in.”

He watched her steady herself on a table in the lab, looking around the dark basement. 

“I’ll be right back,” came a shout from upstairs.

Clockwork watched Maddie flinch, then duck under a table just before the lights flickered on. She couldn’t let them know she was here until after the accident.

Danny Fenton tromped down the steps, his friends in hot pursuit. “You guys don’t need to come down here. My parents will kill you if they find you down here.”

“No they won’t,” Tucker Foley said, “your mother likes me.”

“And your dad likes me,” Sam Manson added. “They’ll just kill _you_.”

“Fair point,” Danny muttered. “But let’s not get caught anyways.”

Clockwork rested his weight on his staff and shifted his form to that of a toddler. “Good luck, child,” he said. 


	8. Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Danny's lost a sock in the dryer.

Sam found Danny sitting in front of the dryer in the Fenton residence. She crossed her arms and cocked a hip, waiting for him to notice her. 

He didn’t move. He didn’t seem to even be blinking.

Sam arched an eyebrow, studying the situation a bit closer. The dryer - open, but empty - and… Danny sitting in front of it. Staring into its empty barrel. That was it.

“Okay, I give up,” she said. She walked forwards and tapped the boy on the head with her novel. “Wake up, ghost boy.”

He flinched at the light tap and glanced up at her. “Oh, hi Sam.”

“Homework time.” She wiggled the book.

“Not right now,” he said, turning his attention back to the dryer. “I almost have it figured out.”

Sam hummed - a dismal, annoyed noise. “The only reason I picked this book was so that we could read it together. You’d better have a _really_ good reason if you made me read this book without you.”

Danny pointed at the dryer. “It ate one of my lucky socks.”

Sam ground her teeth. “Yeah, I’m not-”

“Seriously, Sam,” Danny said, scooting forwards and staring into the dryer’s depths. “I think it seriously _ate one of my lucky socks.”_

“I never thought I’d live to see the day you succumb to your dad’s more crackpot theories,” Sam said. “It’s a _dryer_ , Danny, and your sock is probably in your mess of a room. I’ve only got an hour before I have to get home; let’s get some of this book project finished.”

“Come here.” Danny grabbed her hand and yanked her down beside him, practically in his lap. “Look.” He pointed into the dryer.

Sam, despite her dark thoughts, took a few seconds to study the dryer. It looked perfectly normal. “I see nothing strange.”

“Don’t you see the glint of green? The hint of electricity in the corners?”

Sam turned to stare at him. “It’s a dryer.”

“I don’t know what to think,” Danny whispered, brushing her to the side and scooting forwards. “Do you think it’s a portal to some world where lost socks go? Part of the ghost zone?” His eyes lit up and he grinned at her. “Maybe there’s a dryer ghost! A lost sock ghost!”

“You, boy, need more sleep. You sound just like your dad.” Sam pushed to her feet and wiggled her copy of book. “Come on. Book report time.”

Danny scowled at her. “I don’t sound like my dad,” he pouted.

“A _haunted dryer_ that _steals socks_? Are you listening to yourself?” Her hands went to her hips. “Are you avoiding doing this project for a reason? Did you forget to get the book?”

“I got the book. I even read it. Most of it. The middle was boring.” Danny waved his hand dismissively. “And yes, if you say it like that, I do sound a bit kooky.” His attention focused back on the dryer. “But…”

“But?”

Danny crouched in front of the dryer. “But I can see…” He reached his hand inside the dryer, feeling around the inside of the barrel.

“Your sock isn’t in there. It’s empty.”

“I don’t think-” Danny’s eyes widened, surprised. Then he vanished.

Sam stood still for a long moment. “Not funny,” she told the invisible boy, not willing to risk her dignity waving her arms around in an attempt to touch him. “There’s now way you vanished off to the land of socks that have been lost in the dryer. We have a report to do.”

Silence.

“I’m serious, Danny. If I have to do this report by myself and you’re not in _mortal peril_ , your life will be over.”

More silence.

Sam scowled, only half convinced Danny wasn’t still sitting in front of her, invisible and intangible. She glanced down at the book with a sigh. At least the book had a simple plot. Without Danny’s ‘help’, she could have the report done quite a bit faster. “I’m never partnering up with you again, just so you know,” she told the hallway - just in case he was there. She stalked back down the stairs, ready to head home. There was no point hanging around here. 

“Going home so soon?” Maddie asked from the couch.

“Danny got sucked through an interdimensional portal to the land of lost socks,” Sam said. “I’ve got homework to do.”

Jack bounded off the couch, dropping his needlepoint. “Was it the dryer? I _knew_ that thing was haunted! _MADS_! I’ll get the containment device! We’ll tear that contraption apart screw by screw if we have to!” He ran from the room, headed for the basement.

Maddie flicked to a new channel, having not moved from her spot on the couch. “Yes, Jack,” she said. “Danny’s getting more creative in avoiding homework, huh?”

Sam smiled and shrugged a shoulder. “Well, it was his lucky sock that disappeared.”

“See you later, sweetheart,” Maddie called as Sam closed the door behind her.


	9. Glow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Dora tries to connect with her brother while catching 'fireflies'.

Dora stood at the window, staring out into the darkness of the night. She tucked a shawl closer around her shoulders, and fingered the pendant around her neck.

“I couldn’t have imagined such a thing,” one of the maids said, coming up beside her. “Night.”

Dora smiled. Taking over the kingdom from her brother had brought around several rather large changes. The ghosts bowing to her and calling her ‘queen’ hadn’t been so unexpected, neither were the nightly dances thrown in the castle's massive ballrooms. The facsimile of a day/night cycle like in the human world had certainly been a surprise.

She pushed open the window, leaning out into the air. No wind blew like in the human world, and the little points of light that glowed overhead were doorways and ghosts instead of stars. Where the darkness had come from, she didn’t quite know, but the people of her kingdom seemed to enjoy it. And plenty of tourists from all over the infinite realms flocked to the castle to experience night time for the first time, creating a booming economy.

“Look,” the maid said, stepping next to her and pointing down into the castle grounds. “What is that?”

Dora squinted down into the garden. Tiny little specks of light danced and hovered in the darkness. 

“You don’t think…” the maid said, trailing off.

Dora sent the ghost a confused look. “What?”

“Lightning bugs. I vaguely remember them.” The maid giggled. “I used to catch them with my parents.”

“Interesting,” Dora whispered. Her eyes narrowed as she studied the slowly moving, blinking motes of light. She glanced at the maid, pulling the memory out of the ghost’s mind. Laughter. Family. The thrill of running through a field at night, chasing little glowing bugs. Then she nodded, having come to a conclusion. “Excuse me,” she said to the maids.

“But, milady, you have an appointment with-”

Dora waved the protesting handmaids away and headed out the door. “I’ll be back,” she said. “This will just take a few minutes.”

“But you’re already late!” one of them called as the door shut behind her.

Dora walked down the hallway, hands folded gently in front of her, nodding politely at the servants that stepped out of her way. She took several turns, three sets of stairs downwards, and paused outside a thick-looking door near the outer edge of her castle. 

A guard stood outside the door. “Milady,” the guard said.

“Walter,” she greeted, gesturing towards the heavy lock, “open the door please.”

“He’s not in the best of moods today,” the guard said, hesitating.

Dora hummed. “I understand. Open the door.”

The guard slipped a key out of a pocket and fitted it in the lock. It clicked loudly. From inside the room came a loud roar, smoke billowing out from between the cracks in the door. Something large and heavy slammed into the wall.

“Yes. A mood,” she murmured. She stepped forwards and pushed open the thick door; it moved easily under her fingers. “Aragon?”

A black and purple head loomed in the doorway. Teeth as large as Dora’s head gleamed as he spoke. “What do you want, _false queen_?”

“To catch fireflies.” She cocked her head. 

A red-slitted eye appeared in the doorway. “What are flyer-fies?”

“Fireflies,” Dora corrected. “Small, glowing bugs.”

The slit narrowed. “Why?”

“For fun.” Dora folded her hands on her stomach. “I would like you to join me.”

“You will allow me from my prison if I help you hunt down fire-bugs?” The eye dissolved into mist, condensed, and formed into a young, spindly man. “What use are the bugs? Are we going to conquer a neighboring land?”

“I’d rather you didn’t call your bedroom a prison,” Dora said.

Aragon stepped forwards, hesitating just before stepping through. “I am locked in. What else would you like me to call it?”

Dora narrowed her eyes slightly. “And you’ve been repeatedly told that if you’d stop trying to _destroy everything_ , I’d not lock you in. It’s sort of your fault.”

He hissed, a forked tongue licking the air. “Show me these fire-bugs, _false_ _queen_.”

“Fireflies,” she corrected again. “Come.” She turned her back to him and started to walk towards the outside doors. “They’re in the garden.”

She felt him looming behind her, no doubt stretching his shape to be taller than her. She didn’t turn around to look. He’d been allowed to torment her for too many centuries, and she’d finally found the ability to change. She wasn’t going to change back. _She wasn’t_. 

“You used to cower from me,” Aragon muttered, taking a few quicker steps to walk beside her. “What happened?”

“Phantom happened.”

“The human,” Aragon sneered.

“The half-ghost,” Dora said with a small smile. “A ghost with the ability to change. How wonderful a talent. One he was willing to let me borrow.”

Her brother’s tongue snaked out again. “Regrettably.” They walked in silence, the guard tailing behind them. “You still have not explained the importance of these flies.”

“I did. They’re fun.” Dora smiled and pushed open a side door, leading them out into the garden. It was still dark outside.

Aragon refused to leave the castle, gazing around with a pale face and a raised chin. “What destruction have you brought to our kingdom?” he demanded.

“It’s night time,” Dora said, turning in a little circle, smirking at the tiny victory of him referring to the kingdom as theirs. “Come, brother. It’s safe. Night time does not last for long.”

He took a small step into the darkness. He looked tense and uncertain. 

Dora stepped over, snagging his hand, and led him into the garden. “We are going to catch the fireflies. We are going to have fun.”

Aragon didn’t fight her pull, allowing her to lead him through the darkness to where the tiny motes of light were glowing and drifting around. “I do not know how to have fun. I know how to rule. I know how to-”

“Hurt people,” Dora muttered, cutting into his complaints. “Look. Fireflies.” She pointed towards a flick of light.

“Those are not bugs,” Aragon said, unraveling his fingers from hers and rubbing them on his doublet. “Those are tiny, annoying ghostlings.”

Dora laughed, jogging forward and reaching for one of the bugs. She curled her fingers around it, pulling it closer. She peered down at the thing, looking like a little flicker of light, and reached for the handmaid’s mind. In the blurry memory, a family captured lightning bugs in a jar, sitting around a campfire, enjoying each other’s company. 

A smile crossed her face. She turned to her brother, standing stiff-armed in the darkness. “Look,” she said, walking over and showing him the tiny creature. “We can-”

His hand blasted forwards, snatched the tiny ghost, and squashed it. Glowing goo oozed from between his fingers. He sneered at her. “Those things are nothing but a waste of space.”

Dora held very still. “Why did you do that?” she finally asked.

“I would destroy them all,” Aragon snarled. “How dare they step foot in _my_ _cast_ -”

Aragon vanished mid-word. Dora could hear him scream from his bedroom inside the castle, howling up a furious storm. “What a waste,” she whispered. “Why did I think…?” Then she shook her head and knelt down, prodding one of the small drips of glowing goo with a finger. It flared back to life at her touch, shooting in the air and twirling away.

She stood up and raised her chin, drawing her shoulders back, and headed back inside. One of her maids stood by the door, bowing when she approached. “Milady, you are quite late for your appointment.”

“I’m going,” Dora said. She hesitated for only a moment at the intersection of several halls, gazing down the hallway where her brother was housed. Smoke drifted through the air. “I’m going.” 


	10. Corruption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Danny comes home to find Technus and his mother sitting at the kitchen table.

Danny had a strange home life. He knew that. He accepted it. At some point over the last two years, he’d decided it was a Defining Personality Trait and just rolled with it, incorporating it into just about everything he did and each joke he made. 

When he got home after a long day of school, Danny always had a wide range of expectations from his parents. He expected to be hugged and given a warm welcome along with a fudgy snack. Or perhaps to be doomed and threatened with dissection. Or perhaps to be dragged off to hunt a ‘ghost’ that only had a 25% chance of existing in the name of ‘family time’. Or perhaps to be hunted himself, captured, and stuck in a containment device. 

One would think, with that sort of mindset, that Danny couldn’t possibly be surprised when he walked through his back door. 

One would be very, very wrong.

“Tech-”, Danny cut off the blurted name at the sight of his mother sitting at the kitchen table with (of all the ghosts) _Technus_ , freezing halfway into the kitchen. “Ghost!” 

“Hello child,” Technus greeted.

“Danny,” his mother said, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, apparently unwilling to take her eyes off the ghost. “This is Technus. We’re having a chat.”

Danny stood, mouth open, trying desperately to figure out what was going on. Technus seemed relaxed, more lounging in the air than sitting in a chair. His mother was attentive, a rather large weapon sitting next to her hand, but it was off and she wasn’t holding it. She didn’t appear to be afraid, or being held against her will. They appeared to be having a conversation. Based on the cup in Technus’s hand, they almost appeared to be having a chat over coffee. “What’s going on?” he finally asked.

“Technus was possessing our server,” Maddie said pleasantly. “I removed him, and in the course of beginning to dissect him, he managed to give me a few reasons to leave him in one piece.”

“He _is_ good at talking,” Danny muttered and took a few steps in the kitchen, letting the door fall shut behind him. He dropped his backpack on the ground and mentally apologized to Sam for not getting his homework done as he had promised. She’d understand. Probably.

Technus waved his cup. “And she offered me this wonderful drink while we talked! It is, how you say, the bees knees.”

Danny arched an eyebrow. “Sure,” he said, walking over to the table. It was covered in glowing paper. The glowing was odd, even for paper from FentonWorks. “What are you talking about?”

“Technus supposedly ran away from the ghost zone because of a glitch. A bug in the system.” Maddie tapped the paper, still keeping an eye on Technus. “It’s honestly quite interesting, looking at the ghost zone through the senses of a computer ghost.”

“What’s interesting about it?” Danny didn’t need to use his eyes to keep track of Technus; the ghost was a spot of cold in his brain. He picked up a piece of paper and studied it. It… was gibberish. Definitely English, because he could see words he understood. His forehead wrinkled.

“He sees his world as a sort of computer, complete with codes and an operating system.” Her smile was thin and stressed, but Danny could see the interest sparkling in her eyes. “Technus was able to provide me a copy of some of that coding.”

Danny nodded, the gibberish making more sense. It did look something like he imagined computer code would look. “Neat, I guess.”

“Very,” Maddie said. “Unfortunately, I don’t know much about computer coding.”

“Tucker does,” Danny said before he thought through the response, then froze. 

Technus’s eyes lit up. “That’s true! The child with the hat. He would be able to help! Locate him for us,” he demanded.

“No,” Maddie cut in. “I’m not involving _children_ in-”

Danny reached over and rested his hand on his mother’s shoulder, sending a tendril of energy through her. The woman froze in place, hands halfway through a gesture. He was relatively sure she wouldn’t be able to see or hear what was going on, half-possessed like this. He glared at the ghost. “What’s really going on, Technus?”

“A glitch,” the ghost said, setting down his cup. “A file has gotten corrupted.”

“The ghost zone,” Danny said flatly, “has a _glitch_.”

Technus leaned forwards, his eyes narrowing. “I am a _master_ of technology, _child_. I know a glitch when I see one.”

Danny leaned forwards too, careful to keep his hand on his mother’s shoulder. “Prove it. Prove this isn’t just some stupid scheme.”

Technus seemed to fluff up like an angry chicken, his form growing slightly. “I… I…” he hesitated. Then deflated. “I cannot. It is not something you would see.”

“And so you just want me to believe you.”

The ghost shifted through the papers. “It is here,” he said, sounding almost manic. “I know it’s here. It will spread if we don’t catch it. It will infect other systems. It will bring down the whole world-”

“This sounds like a great way to avoid being dissected,” Danny said, “but the ghost zone doesn’t really have a code-”

“Not for _you_!” Technus snapped. Electricity zapped between the ghost’s flyaway hairs. “To you, the ghost world is a place full of heroes and villains, of adventures to be undertaken, of mysteries to be solved. That is _you_. And I do not tell you otherwise, because it is true for you. To me, the ghost world is the most complex and beautiful piece of coding, a computer of incredible power, so intricate…” He trailed off, slowly picking up the papers and sorting them into a stack. “To see it broken this way... I know it’s here. I know it’s here,” he whispered. “But you would never see it.”

Danny was quiet, letting Technus collect the papers, wondering if he should believe the ghost or not. “You’ve tried to hurt us too many times, Technus. I’m not involving Tucker unless you can prove to me what you’re talking about.”

“You’ll doom both our worlds because I’m a villain and can’t be trusted,” Technus said. 

“I’m not the one that’s tried to take over the human world _eight times_ ,” Danny shot back. “Excuse me for noticing the pattern.”

The ghost’s odd black eyes gleamed. “I… Yes.” He fell silent.

Danny let the silence settle in the kitchen for a long minute. “Well?”

“I am thinking.” Technus picked up a few more pages, running his fingers along the edges. Then he scowled and shook his head. “I cannot. I _cannot_ show you a computer glitch!” 

“Then you belong back in the ghost zone,” Danny said. Light cascaded around him as he switched to Phantom, still keeping his grasp on his mother’s shoulder. “You want to go yourself, or should I escort you?”

“Always the hero,” Technus shot back, snatching the rest of his papers and holding them to his chest. “Always… the…” he trailed off, eyes narrowing, head tipping to the side and a smile appearing on his face.

“What?” Danny asked.

Technus very slowly set down the stack of glowing papers, flicking the top gently to remove a wrinkle. Then he pushed back from the table and raised his hands. Energy flickered around him, his attitude suddenly changing. “You have caught me, halfing. I, _Technus_ , master of all things mechanical and beeping, was planning to _destroy this world_!” 

Danny tensed.

The ghost dove forwards, snagged Maddie from her seat, and dragged her through the floor. Danny was a beat too slow to stop him. “Hey!” he yelled, more than a little bit relieved that Technus was finally showing his true colors, and followed. He caught a glimpse of them disappearing through the portal, the echo of his mother’s shout of surprise as she came out of the semi-possession to find herself in Technus’s grasp.

The ghost zone flickered into view as Danny dove through the portal as well, chasing them. “Give her back!” he shouted, putting on some extra speed as the energy of this world started to course through him. 

“I will not!” Technus shouted over his shoulder. Then a loud, “ _Ouch_!” as one of Maddie’s feet landed a hard kick. “Stop that!”

Danny couldn’t risk blasting Technus - at this speed and with their erratic flight patterns, he’d hit his mother just as often as he’d hit the ghost. He clenched his fingers, scowled, and kicked up the speed again. He was gaining. 

Of course, once he’d gotten his mother back, he had no idea how he’d get her home again without some serious injury to himself. Perhaps he could possess her, like he’d done to Valerie, and get her home that way.

Technus suddenly drew up short.

Danny’s teeth ground together and he formed a blast in his hands. With the ghost holding still, his aim was good enough that- 

He stopped. “What the hell?” he whispered, drawing up next to Technus and his mother - who was kicking and swearing up a storm, dangling from Technus’s arms. Ahead of them, the ghost zone was crawling in glowing red bugs. The bugs seemed to be eating everything they could touch. Danny let the blast fade away.

“The glitch,” Technus said. “What do you see, hero? A quest to complete? A villain to be defeated?” Then he yelped in pain. 

Danny glanced down to see his mother dropping like a stone. He dove after her.

“She _bit me_!” Technus screamed above him. 

He rather quickly caught up to her, but instead of instantly grabbing her, he fell alongside her for a moment. The last few times they’d met on a ghost hunt, she’d refrained from shooting him on sight. Perhaps he was winning the personality battle. “Need some help?” he asked, going for a cheeky grin.

She scowled at him.

“I can give you a lift home,” he offered, reaching for her hand.

She jerked it out of his grasp. “I don’t trust ghosts,” she snapped.

Danny shrugged, not letting the smile fade. “You can just keep falling, then. No skin off my back.” He rolled onto his back and put his hands behind his head, still keeping pace with her. “I think your son’d like you to come home, though. He looked a bit distraught when I passed by.”

He watched Maddie’s scowl twitch. “How did you follow me so fast, anyways? Were you spying on me?” she demanded.

“You were offering an evil ghost coffee at your kitchen table,” Danny shot back. “I wasn’t spying so much as paying attention.” He waited a beat. “Ride home?”

She slowly held out a hand. 

Danny snagged it and brought her fall to a stop, then pulled her back upwards. Coming to a stop next to Technus and letting his mother dangle from his hands, Danny studied the bugs that were infesting this section of the zone. Everything they touched turned that same color of toxic red. “That doesn’t look like a computer glitch,” Danny said after a moment.

“Not to you, of course,” Technus said with a dramatic roll of his eyes, still studying his bitten hand. “Do you believe me now?”

“I believe there’s something wrong, but I’m not convinced it’s a computer glitch,” Danny muttered. He started to drift closer to the bugs, wanting to see them a bit better.

Technus grabbed his shoulder. “Don’t get too close. It will corrupt you too.”

“It’s just a bug,” Danny argued, shaking off the hand. But he stayed back. 

“Watch,” Technus said, grabbing a floating rock and tossing it towards the bugs. When it was several feet away, the bugs swarmed upwards, attacking the rock. “It’s like a virus.”

Danny was quiet. Then he glanced down at his mother, who was staring at the bugs in wide-eyed fascination. He turned back to Technus. “I’m still not sure why I should care.”

“It’ll keep spreading,” Technus said, “until it infects everything in this world. And when our world goes, so does the human world.” 

Danny narrowed his eyes, still not sure he trusted the ghost. But the ghost could certainly be counted on to act in his own self interest. “Yeah,” Danny said. “Perhaps we should stop it then.” He studied the bugs. “Any idea how?”

“I might have an idea,” Maddie said, looking up at them. Her eyes were narrowed, clearly not trusting the two of them. “Bring me back to my house.”

Danny headed back towards the portal, Technus close behind, and shook his head. Of all the things he expected when he walked in the door after school today, creating a world-saving team out of himself, his mother, and one of the ghost zone’s most annoying ghosts would not have been on the list.


	11. Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Kelly Levi (OC) shows up for her first day of work at the Amity Park Urgent Care.

She walked down the hallway of the clinic, hearing her heels click-click on the tile floor. Heels were not horribly appropriate for her job - she was on her feet all day - but oh how she loved the way they sounded. Click-click-click, so professional. It made her stand up straighter, sound more authoritative, and she didn’t feel quite so short. More than worth the pain in her feet.

Her white coat fluttered behind her, like she was walking in the wind. Her chin-length hair brushed her cheeks. The clipboard was held close to her chest, and her ID tag clinked against it with each step. 

“Hello,” someone said, falling into step next to her. “Are you new?”

She smiled - she loved how her smile showed every sparkling tooth in her mouth - and turned to the speaker. An older male, dressed in scrubs, with a pleasant-looking face. “Yes! Kelly Levi.” She stopped long enough to hold out a hand for a shake.

“Peter Barrish,” he replied. “I didn’t know they were hiring.”

“Oh, I’m so excited,” Kelly said. “This is my first job. My first patient.” Her voice fell almost to a whisper as she brushed her fingers on the folder clipped to the board.

“That sounds exciting,” the nurse said with a kind smile. “Need anything?”

She shook her head, feeling her dangling earrings bounce. “Thank you so much, though.”

“Welcome to Amity Park Urgent Care. Hope to see you around later.” 

“You will,” she said. “I’ll definitely be around.” With one last smile, she headed down the hallway to room four, her heels click-clicking with each step. 

She paused outside the door and glanced down at the clipboard. Teenage male with a broken arm and a variety of other small injuries associated with falling from a second floor window. Failed a preliminary concussion test. A noted fear of doctors. She took a deep breath, brushed a lock of hair behind her ear, and stepped through the door.

An African American woman sat in a chair near the computer, chatting with the young man that was sitting on the bed. She glanced over at the sound of the door opening. “Hello, doctor,” the woman greeted.

“Hello,” the boy parroted, only with a quieter, somewhat terrified timbre to his voice.

“Good morning.” Kelly shut the door behind her and took a bit of sanitizer, spreading it around her hands as she surveyed the room. She caught her reflection in a small mirror above a sink, grinning at the doctor that smiled back at her. Her smile faded a bit in confusion - her eyes were a brilliant green instead of their normal brown. That was odd.

“It’s just a broken arm,” the young man said, breaking her out of her reverie. “I don’t really need to be here.”

“And a concussion, and a variety of other injuries,” Kelly said, turning to her patient. “You fell out a window?”

He scowled. “ _Fell_ is a strong word.”

She arched an eyebrow, not quite sure what that meant, and sat down in the doctor’s chair. Her heart felt like it was fluttering up in her throat with excitement. “My name is Dr Levi.” She shook the mother’s hand.

“Angela Foley,” the woman said. “And my son, Tucker.”

“Nice to meet you.” Kelly glanced at the computer sitting on the desk, realizing she didn’t remember her password. She’d have to ask, and write it down this time. Too many new things to remember. She batted the thought away, opening up the folder on her lap. She didn’t need a computer. “Well, it’s pretty straightforward. We’ll get you down for x-rays and get that arm set and in a cast. It’ll be a bit before we can do the follow-up on the concussion, so you’ll probably be in a cast before that happens. And the nurse noted that a few of your cuts might need a stitch or two.” 

Closing the folder, she looked up at the young man. His arm was resting in a home-made sling, bandages were here and there on his other arm and face. A thick pair of glasses, that looked to be hastily fixed with duct tape, rested on his nose. 

He was scowling down at his lap, but glanced up at her. Then did a double-take, opening staring at her.

“How’s your pain level?” She reached into the file organizer on the desk and pulled out a laminated paper with numbers on it. She held it out so the boy could see. “Scale of 0 to 10.”

“Uh…” he tore his eyes off her, looking down, reading the paper. “Six?”

She hummed and nodded. “I’ll get you something to take the edge off that, get in some orders for the x-ray. Which of the cuts were you worried about?” She set down the folder and walked over to the bed.

The young man leaned away from her, eyeing her out of the corner of his eyes. She felt a spike of annoyance, but brushed it away. The file had noted that the boy was terrified of doctors. At least he wasn’t screaming and running away.

“Tucker,” his mother chidded. The woman got up and came over, pointing to one on his cheek and one on his arm. “These, in particular, seemed deep.”

Kelly nodded. “Let me take a peek at those quick.” She pulled on a pair of gloves and eased the bandage away from the boy’s cheek. He shivered at her touch. “I know, cold hands,” she said gently, “sorry.” The cut on the cheek didn’t look too bad. The one on his arm was a nice gash. “The one on your arm definitely deserves a few stitches. I think we’ll just put a bit of glue on the cheek, help keep the scarring down. It doesn’t look too deep.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Angela said, smiling and sitting back down. 

“I’ll get those orders in for the x-ray and send a nurse in to escort you down.” Kelly stood up. “And I’ll send in something for the pain. Any questions?”

Tucker was still staring at her like she’d grown a second head. Kelly pushed the thought out of her mind. Perhaps this was how his phobia presented. 

“I have a question,” the boy asked. “Are you new here?”

Kelly blinked. “I meant questions about what’s going to happen to you. Your visit here.” She hesitated a moment. “But yes. Why do you ask?”

He shrugged. “Just… wondering.”

“Tucker,” his mother said. “Let the nice doctor get to work.”

Kelly smiled. “Oh, it’s no problem. You hang tight a few minutes. I’ll get this order in.” 

As she stepped out the door and closed it behind her, trying to remember what her supervisor had said about how to put in an order for an x-ray - her silly brain was having trouble today, she just couldn’t remember - she heard the young man ask for his phone.

“It’ll just be a minute, you don’t need a game to entertain yourself for that long,” the mother responded.

“I want to call Danny,” Tucker said. “He… fell too. DIdn’t get as hurt, though. Lucky. I want to see how he’s doing.”

Kelly shook her head and walked over towards the nurse’s station. She would have to ask about the orders. Hopefully she wouldn’t seem too absent-minded. She walked a bit harder on the tile floors, making her heels click louder. Click-click-click. Maybe the professional sound would make up for the silly question. Overall, she thought her first patient had gone rather well so far.

“Oh yes. I’m going to be around here for a long time. I love this place,” she said. She felt a happy fluttering in her chest, and just for a moment the clinic around her seemed to glow a brilliant green. “My hospital,” she whispered. “Mine.”


	12. Gloves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Dani showed up in a hospital in Seattle, and Jack gets sent to help her.

Jack Fenton sat down in the uncomfortable chair, his bulk moving slowly and carefully to avoid scaring the girl sitting on the other chair. There was something odd about her, the way she held herself, the little glances out of the corner of her eye, the way her hair didn’t quite fall right. Jack couldn’t quite stop himself from cataloging all the little differences about her, even as he tried to stop himself and see her as just a girl. A girl in need of help. “Hi,” he said, keeping his voice gentle.

“Hello,” she said. 

Jack opened his mouth to say something more, but nothing came out. He couldn’t think of anything to say. He let his mouth close again, his lips twisting in frustration. There was certainly plenty that needed to be said. 

“Why are you here?” the girl asked, her thin fingers digging into the cushion of the chair. Although her knuckles turned white with the pressure, the stiff vinyl didn’t seem to notice the effort her hands were putting in.

“I like Seattle,” Jack said. “Nice city. Always wanted to do the haunted tour…” He trailed off, wondering if bringing up ghosts was, perhaps, a bad idea.

She scoffed. “Seattle’s not haunted.” The IV machine she was hooked up to beeped loudly, and the girl flinched. She studied it for a moment before sighing and sinking back against the hard chair. “That’s not what I meant. I called _Danny_ , not you.”

“Danny couldn’t come.” Jack sort of fudged the truth. Danny could come. Danny had come. But not being 18 yet, the hospital didn’t particularly care what Danny had to say in the matter, requiring Jack’s presence. “I’m here to help.”

“I don’t want your help,” she said, shoulders crunching up around her ears.

Jack shrugged, falling silent, watching the girl glare around the small room. He had only the briefest of explanations as to who this girl was - a genetic malfunction, an aberration, a splintered example of a not-quite-human - and he understood almost none of it. His gaze fell to his bag, and he reached down, pulled out his latest needlework project, and quietly got to work. Jazz had said to do that when he was at a loss for words. She’d thought it might be helpful. 

It was nearly twenty minutes of silence, the girl watching him slowly work through his project, before she spoke. “What is that?”

“It’s going to be a quilt,” Jack said, turning the scrap of fabric so she could see a bit better. “All the different types of ghosts from stories around the world. This one’s a banshee. Sits under windows and cries and screams, usually associated with someone dying.” 

She studied it. “You’re… pretty good at that.”

“Lots of practice,” Jack said with a shrug. 

“You don’t seem like… like a guy that would do something like that. Art stuff.”

“It’s calming and good for the mind,” Jack said, tying off the string and picking out a new color. “Jazz got me started on it years and years ago. I’m hoping to have the whole thing done by August, so I can put it in the county fair.” He chuckled. “I won’t win, not compared to the artwork of other people, but it’ll be nice to finish a project.”

Her eyes were blue, just like Danny’s. But there was a shadowed, haunted feel to them - and a blankness that hurt Jack’s heart. 

Perhaps Danny was right. Maybe Maddie should have come instead.

The IV machine beeped again, and this time a nurse knocked and entered the room. “Hello,” he said, walking over to check the machine. “The battery on your IV is getting low. Gotta plug it in.” He smiled at her, holding out a hand. “Back to the bed, please.”

The girl sighed, but reached out for the assistance. She was unstable and barely able to hold her own weight. It was only a few steps, but Jack had to bite back the offer to carry her. She settled against the bed - too skinny, too broken, too empty - and laid her head on the pillow.

Jack was quiet as the nurse fussed for a few minutes, plugging in the IV machine, taking her blood pressure and temperature, setting the blanket over her legs.

Then he turned to Jack. “Parent?” he asked.

Jack wondered how to answer that. He set down his needlework, dug a paper out of his bag, and held it out. It was fake, of course; there were no real legal documents in the world for her. But the stamp was real, and the judge’s signature was real, and that was enough. “Legal guardian, for now.” 

The girl on the bed flinched.

The nurse glanced at the papers. “As of yesterday, huh?” he asked. “Nice to meet you, Mr Fenton. Wanna chat in the hall?”

Jack leveraged himself out of the chair and followed the man into the hallway. “She’s going to be okay?” he asked.

“Eventually,” the nurse said, walking him to a quiet alcove. “How do you know her?”

“She’s a relation,” Jack said, trying to avoid being specific. “Her and my son are very close, although I haven’t had any real contact with her yet. She called him two days ago and we’ve been figuring out how to best help her.”

The nurse nodded. “She was found in a park, unconscious. Came in massively dehydrated, malnourished.” The nurse glanced around, his voice quiet. “She’s not saying much, but she definitely hasn’t been treated right.”

Jack frowned. 

“I’ll send the doctor along, but it doesn’t seem like there’s anything permanently wrong with her, physically anyways. Really fragile mentally.” The nurse frowned. “The police have been around a few times to chat with her. Don’t think she’s said much to them. She’s in for a long road.”

Jack glanced over his shoulder, through the cracked-open door. She was picking at her sheets, staring at the sky through the window of the room. She looked so small. Twelve years old. Her third year of being twelve, if Danny’s explanation was right. And she’d be twelve until her broken body stopped working, whether that was next week, or five years from now, or ten, or twenty. “Anything else I should know?” 

“Gentle, slow, careful. She’s a nice girl, when you can get her to talk. I’ll be around every fifteen minutes or so, checking on her.”

“Can she have visitors?” 

The nurse hesitated, but then nodded slowly. “If there’s one or two people you think would do her good, I can’t see how that would hurt.”

“My son will probably scale the outer walls and sneak through the window if you try to keep him out any longer,” Jack said with a smile. “He’s worried out of his mind about her. He can probably get her to talk like nobody else.”

“Sounds great. You let me know if she needs anything,” he said.

Jack stood in the hallway for a long minute, trying to decide what he would say. From what little Danny had told him, the girl had been literally programmed to hate him. Created, somehow, in a lab from a mix of Danny’s genetic material, donor tissue from the corpse of a dead girl, and a ghost. Created and programmed, like a computer, for a task - to be used and then thrown away.

He walked closer, standing in the door, frowning at how little of the bed her frame took up. Her arms were too skinny against the hospital blanket - almost skin and bone. Whoever had created her had certainly not taken care of her.

She noticed his gaze, turning to study him with those sunken, haunted blue eyes. “You don’t have to be here,” she said.

Jack hummed, walked in, and dropped back down into his chair. The vinyl squeaked. “I want to be.”

“Because Danny told you to.” She sounded sullen. “It’s okay to hate me, you know.”

“I don’t hate you,” Jack said, surprised at the thought. Where had she decided that he hated her? What had he done to make her think that?

“I hate _you_ ,” she shot back, eyes narrowing. She leaned forwards a little. Little sparks of green shone against the blue.

Jack shrugged. “Join the club,” he murmured. He rested his arm on the bed, but drew away when she flinched away from him.

“I don’t want you to touch me,” she snapped, clearly uncomfortable. 

He nodded and kept his arms to himself, careful to keep his arms to the small armrests. “I plan on sticking around, just so you know. And Danny’s planning on stopping again by after school.” He picked up his needlepoint, studying the messy shadowing job he’d done with a frown.

“Again?” came her soft voice after a minute of silence.

“He was here… day before yesterday,” Jack said, squinting at the banshee’s arm and trying to decide the easiest way to fix it. “You were out cold, and the hospital wouldn’t look twice at a 17 year old. Came and got me instead.”

“He told you who I am, right?”

“Yup.” Then Jack shrugged a half-shoulder. “Okay, a little. Getting anything out of Danny is only slightly easier than storming Fort Knox.” He grinned at her. “I got that you’re important to him, and that you’re family, and that I can help. That’s enough.”

“I’m a monster, you know that,” she said. 

Jack pointed at his needlepoint. “This is a monster. You look like a scared young woman in need of some help. Maybe you’re not as human as me, but that doesn’t make you a monster.”

She bristled, but didn’t respond.

Jack let the quiet last for a few minutes, slowly fixing the bad shadowing on his banshee. 

“I don’t know what you want from me,” she said.

He glanced at her. She’d drawn her knees up to her chest, and was hugging them close. She looked lost and broken, and somehow even smaller and younger than before. “I don’t want anything from you,” he said, confused. 

She frowned.

“Danny said you wouldn’t trust me,” Jack said, deliberately keeping his gaze on his needlepoint. Jazz had been correct in packing it for him - it did seem much easier for the girl to talk when he wasn’t staring at her. “But you can, you know. Jazz has already cleaned out her bedroom for you, and Danny-”

“Bedroom?” she asked.

Jack blinked at her. “Room. With a bed in it.”

She scowled. “I know what a bedroom is-” she cut herself off, like she was going to say something more. She let out a breath through her nose. “You make it sound like I’m coming to live with you.”

“You are!” Jack grinned. “See, we got the legal-”

“I’m not coming to live with _you_ ,” the girl snapped. “We’ve been over this. I hate _you_. I don’t trust _you_. Why should I live with you?”

Jack twisted his mouth into a half-frown, turning his eyes back to his needlepoint. “Why wouldn’t you?”

“Take off your gloves.”

Jack hesitated. He didn’t take off his gloves. “Why?”

“Because I’m a monster. I’m _contaminated_. I’m broken, and seeping radioactive liquid, and, and, and I can hurt you just by touching you.” Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see her eyes burning a toxic, horrible green. “And I want you to take off your gloves.”

He watched the way the light gleamed off the black glove, slowly twisting his fingers. He didn’t take off his gloves. He just didn’t. Since learning how contaminated Danny was, Jack had even gone to great lengths to not touch his own son. 

But Jack knew, in the depths of his being, that Danny wasn’t a monster. And neither was this girl. Yes, she could hurt him with just a touch. But...

Slowly, he took off one of his gloves. His skin was extremely pale, fingers a bit wrinkled from the moisture inside the gloves. His fingernails were in need of clipping. He flexed his fingers and ran them over the intricate stitching of his needlepoint, feeling details he couldn’t through the gloves.

Then he held out his hand to her.


	13. Regret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Rotating POV story (Danny/Vlad/Maddie) about the destruction of the Ghost Zone.

It was his mother’s birthday.

Danny Fenton slipped through the portal, careful not to be seen. He knew just what to get her - a flower from the depths of the ghost zone. It was a brilliant green rose-like flower with red leaves and thorns rumored to have some sort of magical properties. Danny wasn’t entirely sure what they were, but he knew his mother would love experimenting on it.

Kicking off the little spit of land the portal was located on, he spiraled into the wastes. He’d be home in a couple hours at most. Nobody would even notice he was gone.

\--

Vlad Masters settled down at his desk, fingers brushing over the phone. It was Maddie’s birthday today. Slowly, his finger traced up and down the back of the handset, debating what to say. Last time, they hadn’t parted on the best of terms. Vlad was certain she was still harboring a bit of a grudge.

Perhaps he should just send a card.

“Oh grow a pair,” Vlad hissed at himself, picking up the phone. 

The phone rang and rang and rang.

Vlad almost felt relieved when it clicked over to the overly-full voicemail and he got to hang up. Now he could send a card, and not find out what sort of things Maddie had to say about their last meeting.

\--

Maddie Fenton was too busy to answer the phone. She was sitting at the kitchen table, staring down at a mess of data, trying to make sense of the numbers. It was _just_ about to come together in her brain - she could feel it - and there was no way she was going to start over just to answer the phone when it was likely a computer telemarketer.

The data showed a bit of information Maddie had taken to calling the resonance-factor. She would send a ping of sound into the ghost zone, much like sonar, and collect data from its reflection. They were using it to create a map of the zone near the portal and track how the ghost zone’s physical layout changed. But she had noticed this strange echoing noise in the sound, and the echoing noise had been slowly getting worse and worse. Now it was messing with the data they were getting back so much their maps were no longer accurate.

But what was causing it? How to stop it from interfering with her exploration? 

\--

Danny curled past Skulker’s lair, noticing that it was much quieter than normal. Generally the hunter’s home was a cacophony of noise from his captured prey. Today there were just a few lonely mewls of sound. He hesitated, but shrugged and kept going. Who knew what went through that ghost’s mind.

\--

Vlad signed the card with a flourish and set it in the envelope. It was a beautiful card that straddled the difference between felicitations and apologies for his latest choices. He stared down at the hunter green envelope, Maddie’s name already written in silver ink. Oh, how things would be easier if he could just explain the cause of his behavior.

But he couldn’t. That was just the way it was. He would simply have to do better.

He pushed away from his desk, deciding to invisibly drop the card in her home instead of mail it. As he flew out of his house and into the air, Vlad debated where the best place to leave the card was. Despite his initial leanings towards her pillow so she would read it before she went to bed and tenderly hold the card in her sleep, he decided the kitchen table would be more appropriate. 

She was probably going to shred the card anyways, and the paper shredder was in the kitchen. He might as well be realistic - and perhaps she’d be appreciative of the fact that she didn’t have to walk as far.

\--

Maddie scribbled on a piece of paper, creating a graph of her odd data. It was an s-shaped curve, growing slowly at first, then quickly, and was now slowing down again. She sat back in her chair.

She’d seen graphs like this in the ghost zone before - it was actually the most common energy growth pattern in that world. Ghosts themselves used a very similar pattern when they were going to be blasting something. A slow gathering of energy, then a quick spike in power, followed by a slow pooling of energy until it hit the appropriate level to create the blast. Of course, in ghosts it happened over tenths of a second instead of over days like this one.

The end of her pen went into her mouth and she chewed at it. 

The graph was hinting at the idea that the ghost zone was in the final build up to something. Perhaps some sort of energy release.

But what? And why?

\--

Danny flew deeper into the ghost zone, more and more feeling an odd sense of dread. Of course, a sense of dread in the ghost zone wasn’t exactly unheard-of, but this was definitely a weirder feeling than normal. 

He hesitated at one point, hovering in place and looking around. There were very few ghosts around, and they were mostly the really small ones. 

It was almost like something was… wrong.

He frowned, debating just heading home, when he saw a glowing spot of red and green. “Hey!” he said, grinning and diving down to the floating bit of rock. There was the flower he was looking for! “Perfect.”

Digging a pot and a shovel out of his bag, he settled down next to the flower and started digging it out of the ground. 

Then he’d head home.

\--

Vlad’s feet settled on the ground outside of FentonWorks. He paced back and forth for a moment, gathering up the courage to enter into the home. Hopefully his last computer hacks preventing the Fenton’s security system from recognizing him were still in place. Otherwise he’d set off every sensor in the home.

He walked through the back door, making sure he was invisible, and into the kitchen. He hesitated, noticing Maddie sitting at the messy kitchen table, chewing on the end of her pen. That threw a wrench into his plans.

Perhaps he could _now_ leave the card on her pillow… And steal Jack’s at the same time.

He tossed the idea out of his head and walked over, glancing down at what she was doing. Energy graphs. Really basic ghost zone physics that even he understood. So why was she worrying over them?

He squinted closer. An echo in her sonar data.

Resonance.

He let his card fall to the ground, feeling his stomach drop. “Shit,” he whispered.

\--

Maddie heard someone breathe a quiet, “shit,” from right behind her ear. She tensed and twirled, weapon going up before she even had identified the fact that there was nothing there. She waited, gun up and aimed towards where the voice had come from.

There was the slightest of cold breezes. A ghost.

“I know you’re there,” she demanded. “How did you get into my house?”

The ghost shifted into view - the vampiric one that was always tormenting Jack. “Why, hello my dear,” it said with a greasy smile.

“Hello nothing,” she snapped. “What are you doing in my house?”

“Why,” the ghost hesitated, “I’m looking at your data. And what an excellent graph you’ve made.” 

Maddie’s eyes narrowed. That wasn’t the whole truth, obviously. The ghost hadn’t known about her data until it had already entered her home. But, based on the quiet exclamation from earlier, the ghost understood the purpose of the graph. And she was… curious. “What does this mean?” she asked, gesturing towards the papers with one hand, the other keeping the gun steady on the ghost’s face.

“It means we need to shut your portal down.”

“Ah… no. I don’t think so.” Maddie tipped her head. “Not without an excellent explanation.”

\--

Danny grinned, slipping the shovel back into his backpack and studying his prize. Yeah, he’d done a hack-job on it’s roots - but who would have expected a ghost flower (a dead flower?) to have such an extensive system of roots? Hopefully he hadn’t killed it. He grabbed the pot, tucking it under his arm, and glanced around.

The quiet was unsettling. And there was this… it wasn’t quite a noise. Danny couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but it was something like the rumble of a really low, low tone. That he could feel in his stomach more so than his ears. And it was getting louder.

“I’m going to get out of here too,” Danny muttered, shooting into the air and heading back towards the portal, plant firmly tucked under his arm.

\--

Vlad didn’t really have time for an explanation. He needed to shut down the Fenton’s portal, then head home and shut down his own. If he was right, he didn’t need the collateral damage ending up in his town. The city didn’t have the budget for it, and the city’s insurance agent had been quite clear that they weren’t going to cover any Fenton-related damages any longer.

But the weapon Maddie was holding was a powerful one. It would hurt, and perhaps cause permanent damage. He had little choice in the matter.

His fingers curled behind his back, clasping each hand. “Ghosts are immortal, yes? Then there should be an infinite number of them... us, clogging up the ghost zone. So there’s a natural balancing mechanism in the ghost zone. When too many ghosts start to build up in one place, too much energy is taken from the environment and the ghost zone reacts to it by annihilating all the ghosts in the area.”

He watched her blink and take that in.

“When the blast wave goes by, you don’t want to be in the vicinity. Your _home_ doesn’t want to be in the vicinity.”

“I’m not sure that sounds…” 

She was speaking too slowly, obviously trying to think through it, and Vlad simply did not have the time for it. “I can come back and give you the longer explanation and spend hours explaining the data to you, but we do not have a lot of time right now.” 

Her lips tightened. But then she nodded. “I don’t trust ghosts, but I can accept the data points in that sort of direction. You leave, I’ll shut down the portal.”

“I’ll help-”

“You’ll leave.” Maddie’s voice booked no room for disagreement. 

Vlad was quite sure that doing anything other than vanishing would get him shot. He narrowed his eyes, waited a beat more, then vanished and headed home.

\--

It took Maddie almost a minute to make sure the ghost was gone. She was spooked by the fact that it could get into her house in the first place - there was a bug in the detection equipment that would need to be sorted out relatively quickly - and had to track down a secondary detector before she was willing to let down her guard.

Shutting down the portal was another story. It was powered by the ghost zone itself, now that it was up and running, and pulling the cord would simply shut down the doors and sensing equipment. There _was_ a way to shut it down, she just didn’t like doing it.

But the ghost had looked spooked. And the data… was pointing in the direction the ghost had indicated. Whatever huge energy blast was building in the ghost zone, she wanted nothing to do with it in her home.

She swore softly and picked up the Fenton Shut-er-Down-her (she hadn’t named it), weighing the grenade-like object in her hand. It would create a huge blast of foam that would block energy from accessing the portal from the other side, shutting it down as effectively as snuffing out a candle by cutting off the oxygen supply.

It would be killer to get the thing reopened. Weeks of work. On the word of a ghost.

Maddie sighed, pulled the activator on the device, and tossed it through the portal, thumbing the doors shut behind it.

\--

Danny was twenty feet from the portal when the foam exploded. He pulled up fast, startled by the rapidly expanding white goo. Within seconds, the portal was completely buried.

He settled down on the bit of rock, feeling the environment around him shaking with the force of the whatever-it-was. He walked up to the foam, reaching out to touch it. It was steaming hot and sticky, still bubbling and growing like some sort of alien monster.

Behind the wall of foam, the green glow of the portal vanished. Danny felt the portal shut off deep inside him, like a punch to the gut.

“That doesn’t bode well,” he whispered, setting down the flower (he could come back for it later) and glancing around. “This is unsettling enough for now, let’s just get home. Vlad’s is… that-a-way?”

He took off at top speed.

\--

Vlad made it home in nearly record time (not that he had ever timed it, of course, he was far too old to be timing how fast he could fly). He slipped right into the hallway, walking up to the picture that hid his portal. The button clicked under his finger, and the giant painting slid to the side. 

He had a similar problem to Maddie’s - portals are not so easy to shut down when they are powered by the ghost zone itself - however he had a much less elegant and far more expensive solution. He turned the power controls up to maximum. In a matter of moments, the portal would overload, fry the circuits, and cause a controlled blast out into the ghost zone. It would destroy everything in the area (and his portal) but the damage on this side would be minimal, contained by the portal’s door.

“Horrible timing,” he informed the ghost zone as he heard the portal start to whine. He’d known this was coming; the density of the ghosts had been getting too high. The energy in the ghost zone had been feeling more and more fragile. But he’d just been getting settled, got the ghosts to understand to leave him alone, and everything was getting nice and quiet. 

His finger hovered over the controls for the door.

\--

Maddie stared at the dark portal. A portion of the foam had come through to this side, effectively gluing the portal shut. Behind the doors, no doubt the device was filled with the steaming foam, covering all the circuits and wires. 

Jack was going to be very unhappy when he got back with her ‘surprise’ birthday cake.

There was a short-ish window of time before the foam set up hard. She would have to start cleaning.

“Danny!” she called. “Come help me get this cleaned up!”

Silence.

\--

Danny found the floating purple football and pushed it out of the way. “Found you!” he said, diving forwards.

The portal’s door was closing. Danny picked up speed, but he wasn’t going to make it. In the small space left open, Danny could see Vlad staring back at him.

“Vlad!” he called. “Wait!”

There was an odd expression on Vlad’s face as the door slammed shut, locking the portal shut and locking Danny into the ghost zone: regret.

Danny hovered, not entirely sure what to do. He rubbed his forehead, starting to get a headache from the constant throbbing. Then he turned. He had two options left - Clockwork and Frostbite. He had to get to one of them. They would know what was going on. They’d help.

He had barely started flying when Vlad’s portal ripped itself to shreds. Danny screamed, tucking into a ball and avoiding the worst of the shrapnel. he tumbled out of control, his arm flashing bright pain. By the time he drifted to a stop, goo was oozing down a huge slice in his arm and his ears were ringing and he wasn’t entirely sure which direction was up.

It took a precious few minutes for Danny’s mind to start working again. He flew in the direction he hoped Clockwork’s tower was, worried. Both his parents and Vlad had shut down their portals. The deep sound was getting worse, and the silent emptiness around him was starting to get terrifying.

He flew faster and faster, pushing himself to his limits. He had no idea what was going on, but he wanted out of it.

He hoped this time he wouldn’t be too late.


	14. Breathe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Danny gets spooked by his non-human-ness, and his sister attempts to help.

It was a dare from Tucker. Wasn’t it always a dare from Tucker? Why in the world did Danny always fall for the dares? When would he learn?

He was hiding in the attic of his house, sitting in the dust between boxes of forgotten things, listening to his heartbeat and feeling this chest slowly move in and out as he breathed. He sneezed now and then, his nose stuffy from the dust floating in the air, but after nearly an hour of not moving, the dust was finally settling.

“Danny?” came a shout.

It was his sister. Danny thought about answering, but just pushed himself a little deeper into his shadowed hiding spot. 

_God_ , he was acting like a child right now. Hadn’t he outgrown hiding from his sister when he was, like, three? 

But that thought didn’t get him to move. 

“Danny!” came her shout again, just a few minutes later. “Mom and Dad went to the store! I know you’re up there!”

Danny scowled. He didn’t doubt that - there were at least thirteen devices in the house that could pin-point his position to within a few inches. Drawing his legs up to his chest, he sighed. It was only a matter of time before the girl invaded his space with the intent of helping. She had no ability to just let someone brood over their misfortunes in life.

“What do you want?” he yelled back.

The attic door squeaked as it opened, the folding ladder clattering as it fell to the floor. “I want to talk,” she said, the ladder creaking as she climbed it.

“Of course you do,” Danny muttered.

Her flashlight was too bright as she popped into the dark space. He could see her nose wrinkle at the dust and dank. “Why are you up here, anyways? Can we talk in your room or something?”

Danny didn’t answer. If she wanted to talk that much, she would have to suffer for it. Otherwise she could leave him alone.

She picked a path through the scattered remains of the past, slowly working her way over to him, kicking up all the dust that had settled. She stopped, just a few feet away, and settled herself on a box. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Danny offered, even though he knew she wouldn’t accept it. 

“What’s wrong?” she asked again.

“I’ll be fine,” Danny said - being honest this time. “I just need to be alone for a bit and think.”

Jazz rolled her eyes and crossed her legs with a hum.

Danny sighed. His sister didn’t believe in being alone to think. “Really Jazz. I don’t need to talk.”

“You don’t _want_ to talk,” she corrected. “My book says…”

Danny tuned her out with a scowl. Resting his chin on his knees, he pulled his legs a bit tighter against his chest. That damned therapy book was going to be buried twenty feet under the ground some day. Perhaps today.

His fingers traced patterns in the dust. Hopefully his parents would never realize how dusty it was getting up here. No doubt it’d be his job to get it cleaned.

“Are you listening to me?”

“No.” Danny didn’t bother to look up at her. He drew a smiley face on a dusty box top, then frowned at it and dashed it out of existence with a swipe of his hand.

“This is not a great way to handle adversity, Danny-”

“Who said it was adversity?” Danny interrupted, his tone a bit short. “Who said there was anything wrong with me? Maybe I really, honestly, just want some alone time?”

Jazz’s eyes narrowed. “You only hide in the attic when something is wrong.”

“Maybe I’m trying something new,” Danny shot back. “I’m allowed to do that.”

She drew back, looking a little startled. “I’m just trying to help, Danny. You have so much on your plate…”

Danny let the silence linger for a minute before giving in to the sad look on his sister’s face. She really was just trying to be nice - despite the fact that it was really, really annoying help. “Jazz, if I needed help, I’d let you help.” He smiled a little. “I promise that when I need to talk, you’ll be the first person I come to. I just… want some alone time.”

“You sure?” she asked.

“Yeah. I just had a long, stupid day, and I want a bit of quiet time before dealing with Mom and Dad.” 

She hesitated a moment more, then stood up and brushed the dust off her pants. “Okay.” She stood still a few more seconds, clearly not wanting to leave him alone. “I… guess.”

Danny arched an eyebrow. 

Finally she turned and picked her way back towards the ladder. “Did you want the flashlight?” she asked.

“I have one,” Danny lied.

She either didn’t notice the lie, or didn’t care. She hesitated one last time, glancing over at him with a concerned look on her face, before vanishing down the steps with the squeaking of ladder rungs. The door rattled shut and the attic fell into shadows again.

He sat in the dark for a long time, sort of surprised Jazz had left him alone so easily. Eyes closed, he relaxed into the silence.

It’d been a stupid dare. Just a stupid dare. See who could hold their breath longer. Tucker almost always won.

Danny won today.

He pulled out his phone from a pocket, the screen almost painfully bright in the dark, and turned on a timer. Deep breath in. Hold it.

Twenty seconds. Forty. A minute. A minute and a half.

Danny felt nothing - no need to breathe. No… nothing. Not even the vague uncomfortable feeling that came from holding your breath. Just the steady beat of his heart in his chest.

At four minutes, he turned off the phone and let out the breath he was holding. The phone got set on the dusty box and Danny pulled his knees up tight to his chest again. His lungs went in and out, slow and gentle, pushing against his legs. 

He wasn’t exactly sure how to feel about it.

Tucker had - _of course_ \- instantly come up with every cool reason to be able to hold your breath for who-knows-how-long. Swimming underwater. Stinky food. Going really, really fast on the highway.

Danny hadn’t had any of those thoughts. He still didn’t, to be honest. He just wanted the world to stop for a moment and let everything be quiet. Just for a few minutes. Just until his brain decided what to think about this.

He wrinkled his nose, sneezed out some dust, and closed his eyes. Hopefully his parents would be gone for a while. He wasn’t ready to deal with their particular brand of well-meaning chaos.

He rest his head against the dusty box behind him and breathed.


	15. Fav AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Part 1 of 2 in this AU.
> 
> Danny tracks through the Ghost Zone and locates a flower to bring home.

Danny yawned as he flew through the ghost zone, taking a leisurely track through some of the nicer sections. If luck was with him, he wouldn’t run into a single ghost that would attempt to pick a fight. It had taken months of work to convince his mother that the ghost zone wasn’t nearly as dangerous as she thought it was - no need to ruin that on the first trip.

“Why are you going so fast?” came a voice in his ear.

“I’m not?” Danny answered with a roll of his eyes. “If I go any slower, I’ll never get home.”

There was a clicking of keys on a keyboard. “We’re not getting clear enough data on certain things. We’ll have to come up with a better plan than a backpack full of sensors.” His mother sounded like she was scowling. 

Danny grinned. There was no way she’d suggest he spend more time in the ghost zone - she was still convinced the place was full of murderers and other despicable characters, and was only barely allowing _this_ trip - but she had to be frustrated that she wasn’t getting her data. She’d spent weeks planning out this trip.

“Are you sure you can’t slow down, just a little?”

“I’m sure,” Danny said, snugging the backpack full of sensors a little higher on his back. The constantly shifting physics of the ghost zone made slow travel much more complicated. Speed and distance seemed to be connected; the slower he went, the longer physical distance he would have to travel. 

Besides, at the rate he was going, he had a nice, safe path back to the portal. Any slower, and the path back to the portal would get longer and it would route him past Walker’s prison and just a _little_ too close to Skulker’s hunting grounds for his peace of mind. His mother didn’t need to know those two places existed.

She sighed, and Danny could hear the chair squeak as she shifted her weight. “Maybe we could set up a probe network or something.”

Danny fought back a smile at the thought of peppering Walker’s section of the ghost zone with ghost-proof human technology. It would definitely drive the ghost up the wall. “Or something, for sure.”

Looping over a little floating island, Danny glanced around. This was a quiet, peaceful part of the ghost zone, one that allowed Danny to actually take in how beautiful this place was. The shifting gasses and colors, the creatures that scurried around, and the alien pieces of land floating around. 

“ _Wait_!” his mother shouted suddenly.

Danny stopped, glancing around in a moment of panic. The sudden spike of adrenaline made his heart beat loud in his ears, imagining all the horrible things that could be about to descend on him. “What?” 

The ghost zone still seemed peaceful and quiet. His heart slowly sank back down out of his throat.

“We’re getting back some odd data from one of the sensors.”

Danny swallowed back some angry words at that. After all that work to convince her that this world wasn’t dangerous, he couldn’t possibly explain to her why he had a trigger reaction to shouting. “What kind of data?” he asked instead, when he was sure his voice was steady.

“The oxygen levels, oddly. They have gone up nearly fifty percent.”

“Neat,” Danny said. “Not sure it’s worth the scream in my ears,” he grumbled.

“Sorry. I’m trying to figure out if it’s a sensor error,” her voice was quiet, and the keys on her keyboard were clicking furiously. “The oxygen levels have stayed remarkably steady through this whole trip. It’s an anomaly.”

Danny chewed on his tongue for a moment, debating, before turning a bit to his right and heading towards a particular spit of land. 

“Sweetie, can you hold still just a bit longer? I’m still debugging the sensors.”

“I think your sensors work just fine,” Danny said. “I’m taking a detour. I know where the oxygen is coming from. Or I think I do, anyways.” He twirled in the air, taking a lazy route over several little rocks. Ahead of him, the odd spot in the ghost zone came into view. “See that?” he asked, pointing towards it.

“What is that?” she asked. 

Unlike the alien, greenish landscape he’d been traveling through, this area glowed a soft orange. Leafy trees reached high in the sky, creating a forest that covered every inch of ground. “Do you want to know what I know for a fact, or do you want to know what I think it is?”

“Facts, please.”

“It’s located right here.” Danny grinned, deliberately staying quiet as he got closer.

“That’s it?” she asked. She sighed; Danny imagined she was shaking her head and had that half-amused smile on her face. “You’re right about the sensor though, the oxygen levels are getting higher the closer you get to that island.”

Danny chuckled. “I _think_ it used to be part of the human world. You know how Amity Park got pulled into the ghost zone last year? I think it’s like that. A part of our world that got pulled in… and just never got pushed back.” He spiraled in, brushing over the tops of the trees. Each tree sported odd-colored leaves and hundreds of brilliantly glowing orange fruits. He snagged one of the leaves and held it up so she’d be able to see it in the camera. The leaf was an odd shade of purple, and glowed faintly. “See? It looks like a normal, human-world leaf, minus the color.”

“You’re talking about a forest full of plants that have somehow existed in, _reproduced_ in, the ghost zone for enough generations that they’ve turned purple and started to glow.” Her voice was quiet.

With a shrug, Danny dropped the leaf. “Yeah. They still produce oxygen, I guess. You know, trees do that.” 

There was a dead silence over the headset. 

It went on long enough that Danny stopped and tapped his ear. “Hello?” he asked, trying to figure out if it was still functional.

“I’m sorry, Sweetie. I just… you don’t understand the implications of what you’ve found.”

“Oxygen?” 

She laughed breathlessly. “I… Just... Wow. You need to bring home a sample.”

Danny scowled a little. “How do I bring home a sample of oxygen?”

“Of the _tree_ , Sweetheart. Preferably a seedling so we have a complete plant. And any other plant species you can find.”

“It’s just these trees,” Danny swooped down through a hole between the branches. Under the thick canopy, it was a forest of tree trunks and bare ground. The purple from the leaves, the bright orange of the fruit, and the green of the ground blended into a brownish smear of color. “Nothing else is here. What’s so important about some trees anyway?”

His mother was babbling to herself, no doubt scribbling notes on paper so fast she would need help deciphering them later. Chattering about geneticists and botanists and other titles Danny didn’t understand. 

Danny rolled his eyes and got to searching for a good sample for her. It’d be several minutes before she would be ready to talk. Small trees grew here and there, but most were far too big to bring home.

“Oh, Sweetie, grab a couple of those fruits too. Just dump the sensors out the backpack; you can fill up the backpack with samples.”

“The oh-so- _precious_ sensors I got the hour long lecture about being careful with?” Danny arched an eyebrow, lacing his voice with sarcasm. “Just dump them on the ground?”

“Child of mine, I’ve been _incredibly wonderful_ the last two months about this year-long-secret-keeping-mistake of yours. Would you like me to change my mind about that?”

Danny scowled and ducked through a thicker section of the forest. “No.”

“Then drop the sarcasm and pick up a few of those fruits. Try to grab a few at different stages of ripeness.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he muttered. He hesitated when he spotted a small seedling. Dropping down to the ground, he crouched and studied it. Maybe a foot tall, with a dozen small leaves. “How about this one?”

“Perfect!” his mother said. “Do you think you can dig it out? Bring some of the ground with so we don’t disturb the roots too much. I want to see if I can keep it alive.”

Danny snorted. “Never thought you’d be talking about _living_ samples from the ghost zone, huh?”

“You’ve been turning my world upside down since you were born, Sweetie. The last few months especially. Think you can get that home?” 

He dug a toe into the ground. It was almost rock-hard. He’d hate to dig with his hands. “Yeah… let me see if I can find a good stick to dig with.” Danny got to his feet and started wandering around, studying the ground. The place was remarkably clear of broken limbs. Perhaps with no storms or wind, trees just didn’t lose branches as fast. 

“Just think,” his mother was saying, “of what we can learn from these trees. Jack and I don’t have enough knowledge of genetics and biology to really do much with you, and we can’t, for obvious reasons, send any of your samples away for testing. But a plant?”

Danny wrinkled his nose. Sounded boring.

“It opens up so many doors! And now we’ll be able to study if ectoplasm can be carried through genetic markers, and passed down through generations, and how it affects DNA…” she trailed off, the keys on her keyboard clicking away.

Danny spotted something long and skinny and stick-like on the ground. “Perfect,” he murmured, jogging over to grab it. 

But it wasn’t a stick. “Um… Mom?” he said.

“Hmm?” The quick clicking stopped. “Oh, my lord,” she whispered. “Forget about the seedling. Bring that home.”

(to be continued...)


	16. Bone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Part 2 of 2.
> 
> Danny has brought home a bone he found in the Ghost Zone.

It took Jazz quite a long time to roll off the couch after she woke up. She stretched and sat up, running fingers through her hair and looking around. The house was quiet, except for the drone of the TV, and she was alone in the living room. Her father was off on some crazy vacation, and her mother and brother were doing some odd experiment in the basement. 

She scowled. She’d been planning on spying on them, but this cold was lying her low. She’d actually fallen asleep on the couch, listening to her mother lecture Danny on something or another.

With a yawn, she wandered into the kitchen, hesitating at the sight of the two hovering over something on the table (in Danny’s case, the hovering was literal). Her mother was scribbling in a notebook, their voices low.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Maddie jerked, twisting around. “Jazz,” she said, a smile breaking out on her face. “We didn’t wake you, did we dear?”

“No.” Jazz walked over.

“Feeling better?”

“Yeah.” Jazz pulled out a chair. Halfway to sitting down, a hand - a bit sweaty from having been inside a glove - pressed against her forehead. “I’m fine, Mom. And I’m seventeen. I can take my own temperature.”

Her mother hummed, but didn’t remove her hand. “Take it easy this afternoon, Sweetie.”

Jazz waved the hand away. “What is that, anyway?” She pointed to the glowing, stick-like thing sitting on the table, surrounded by dozens of tools and bits of technology.

“I found it in the ghost zone,” Danny said with a grin, dropping his feet to the floor and settling himself into the chair next to Jazz. The coolness that surrounded the young ghost made goosebumps run up Jazz’s arm. “Mom thinks it’s something important.”

“Danny,” their mother said, “stay away from Jazz. I don’t want you getting sick too.”

Danny waved his hand dismissively and dramatically scooted his chair a whole half-inch further away from Jazz.

Jazz smiled a little. “What’s so important about the stick?”

“It’s not a stick,” Danny said, “it’s a _bone_.”

Silence descended on the kitchen. Their mother poked at the bone and wrote bits down on her paper. Jazz waited for an explanation as to why a bone was so important, but none seemed to be coming. She yawned again, her brain not quite ready to try to pick the discovery apart on its own. “Okay, so what’s so important about the bone?”

“Ghost’s don’t have bones,” her mother said, a bit distractedly. “Except for Danny.”

“It’s _Danny’s_ bone?” Jazz asked, trying to fit that comment into her brain. 

Danny laughed.

“No, Sweetie,” Maddie said, chewing on the end of her pencil. “Danny found it in the ghost zone. It’s too big to be a human bone, anyways. I think it’s a leg bone. Maybe from something like a horse, but I don’t know enough about biology to know if that’s right...”

“A ghost horse,” Jazz said slowly. “And why is that important?”

“Because _ghosts don’t have bones_ ,” came the reply from Danny. “So it can’t be a _ghost_ horse, can it?”

That made Jazz pause. And blink. “So… what’s it from?”

Danny grinned. “That’s why Mom thinks it’s important. What’s it from?”

“There’s options,” their mother said. She sighed and sat down, setting down her notebook. “It could be a normal horse that got pulled into the ghost zone and died. But then it probably wouldn’t have ectoplasm burrowed so deeply into it. So it could possibly be a horse that is somehow like Danny - some sort of half-ghost horse. Or maybe a remnant of a whole horse herd that got pulled into the ghost zone and reproduced and this is a twisted descendent of human world horses.”

“A _half-ghost horse_?” Jazz asked skeptically. 

“Of course, then we have the question of why the bone was where we found it. What killed the horse? Where are the other bones? The creature was probably eaten, because there’s chew marks on the bone. So that brings up the question of if something dragged the bone to where we found it or if something took the other bones…” Maddie trailed off, tapping her fingers on the table. 

“Or maybe it’s not even a horse,” Danny whispered as he leaned towards Jazz.

“Hush.” Their mother tapped Danny on the head with the end of her pencil. “Don’t speak unless you understand the gravity of this situation.”

“ _Gravity_ ,” Danny said in his most solemn tone. “Yes, of course.”

Jazz fought back a giggle at her brother’s less than serious expression. “I don’t get what’s so important. It’s a bone. Maybe from a half-ghost horse… thing. What’s the big deal?”

“Because,” Maddie said, staring at them. “Because this whole time we’ve assumed Danny was a fluke. An accident. A one-off. But now we have trees that maybe are some sort of half-ghost trees. A whole forest of them. And an animal - at least one - that somehow got so ectoplasmically enriched that its skeleton is glowing long after it died. And _something_ ate it. A different animal, maybe.” She waved her hands. “Really quickly here we’re talking about an entire half-ghost half-living ecosystem.” 

“You got all that off one bone,” Jazz said, arching an eyebrow. 

“We need to get people in here,” their mother said, picking up her notebook and flipping randomly through the pages. “Like, biologists. Ecologists. This opens up a whole new branch of science.”

“I think you should slow down,” Danny said. “Jazz is right. It’s just one bone.”

Her mother opened her mouth to speak, but Jazz beat her to it. “You do this all the time, Mom. You see one small thing and extrapolate it out way too far. You get so excited that you blow everything out of reality. It’s a thing you’ve found that is _maybe_ a bone - and you’ve jumped right to an entire ecosystem. And, if I’m following what you said right, you don’t know what it’s from or how it got there.” 

Maddie wavered, slowly closing her mouth.

Jazz plowed forward. “Is it completely impossible that this is just some odd ghost… thing? Not an actual bone, but just a normal ghost world object?” 

“Yes,” her mother answered firmly. “If it were an inanimate object - bone or not - made completely of ectoplasm, it would have dissolved when we removed it from the ghost zone. There’s something holding it together beyond what a ghost would have - which, to our current knowledge, means some sort of genetic structure.”

“And it’s impossible it’s not just a bone that got pulled into the ghost zone a long time ago?” Jazz asked. “It has to be some sort of half-ghost creature nobody has ever heard of.”

“Hey,” Danny said, jabbing her lightly with his elbow, “I resemble that remark.”

“I… Yes…” Maddie scowled. “Yes, of course we’ll need to do some testing. We obviously don’t have all the details figured out just by looking at one single bone. I’m just…”

“Extrapolating,” Jazz finished, fighting back a yawn. “And jumping eight steps ahead of what the data shows. You always do that.”

Her mother firmly set down her notebook. “I’m not writing a research grant here, Jazz. I’m just talking.”

“Dad would have said the same thing if he were here,” Jazz said. She yawned and rested her chin on her crossed arms. “You know he would have.”

Maddie fell silent, staring at the bone sitting on the table.

“You know what this means,” Danny said, breaking the silence and snagging the bone. “To the lab!” He held the bone up like a torch and vanished. “And bring fudge!” he called up from the basement.

Their mother laughed just a little, breaking out of her reverie. “You two.” She reached forwards and ruffled Jazz’s hair. “Think you can call for a pizza before you fall back asleep? Danny and I will get a few tests started before supper.”

Jazz hummed an affirmative noise and watched her mother hurry down the stairs. She smiled a little, reaching into her pocket for her phone. 


	17. Childhood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> A short, introspective piece about Danny thinking about school.

When Danny was thirteen, he was a perfectly normal human child - although he would probably have argued with most of that description. When Danny was fourteen, he was… less so. But he was still able to pretend. And that was the key: pretending.

By the time Danny was sixteen, the pretending was getting harder and harder. Making it through a school day - all the focus and conversation and friends and struggles - was getting nearly impossible. 

He sat in a school hallway one March evening, long after everyone but a few of the custodians had left for home, enjoying the quiet. The lights were dimmed, the doors were shut, and there was only the faint rattling noise of the heating system in the vents. The lockers were cold and solid behind his back.

Jazz had brought up the idea of online school months ago, after listening to Danny vent one evening, and Danny had found the idea horribly tempting. More flexibility in his schedule. Whole days where he wouldn’t have to _pretend_. 

His parents had finally given in to his logic. They’d okayed trying it for the last quarter of the school year. An eight week experiment. 

But that meant no more of this school. No more Sam and Tucker sitting nearby. No more teachers standing there, ready to help when he got stuck. A very huge change in the sorts of social interaction he’d grown up with.

Danny wasn’t a huge fan of school. It wasn’t _horrible_ , but Danny would have sworn up and down that he would easily leave it behind if given the ability. Surely there was something better out there than an endless parade of teachers, vapid fellow students, literature, science, history, and mathematics.

Now that it was - perhaps - a reality?

With a scowl, Danny pushed away from the lockers and got to his feet, wandering through the empty hallways. His fingers bounced aimlessly against the lockers as he ‘walked’ his hand down the hallway, finger after finger, ‘jumping’ them over the classroom doors. When the locker banks ended, his finger found a groove in the brick wall and trailed in it as he walked. 

Ever since he could remember, he’d walked down empty hallways like this. At three years old, following his sister around as she started kindergarten. At six, spending hours and hours after school, waiting for his sister to finish her after school activities. At ten, wasting time before school started when Sam had her morning meetings. At fourteen, needing something to ground himself to reality when the world seemed like it was about to wisp away.

At a random classroom, Danny phased through the door and glanced around the room. It was dark and empty, the whiteboard already prepped for tomorrow’s classes. It was some sort of biology class. 

He’ll have to take biology next year. This would be his classroom if he were still here.

He walked towards the desks and picked a chair. The spot he would choose next year if he were still here - one near the back corners out of his classmates’ sight lines. He set the chair on the floor and dropped into it, resting his arms on the desk. 

He sighed and closed his eyes. The desk was cool against his skin. The room smelled faintly of cleaners and teenagers. 

His parents needed a decision in the morning. Fourth quarter started next week.

Danny sat there until the desk had warmed from his touch, eyes closed, hoping someone would just plop the right choice into his brain. Instead it was silence, broken only by the wish he could go back to his childhood. Everything was so much simpler then.


	18. Horror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Maddie and Jack corral Danny into a conversation about his future.

Danny dropped onto his bed with a groan, exhausted after a long day of traveling. Of _course_ Jazz had to pick a college so far away, and end up in a dorm room up several flights of stairs, _and_ pack herself a library’s worth of heavy books. It had been a very long couple of hours getting her settled in her dorm room.

But now she was gone, and Danny’s head was filling with all the positives. The quieter house. An empty room - the larger one, with the better view - that Danny had plans for maneuvering himself in to. And, perhaps the best one, no more nosy budding therapist trying to explain away everything she saw.

He stretched, feeling some of the tension in his muscles fade away. Being home was awesome.

“ _FAMILY MEETING_!” came a shout from downstairs.

Danny moaned, rolling onto his stomach and burying his head in his hands. “Really?” he muttered. “We’ve been home for, like, five minutes.” He glanced over at his bag, still sitting where he’d thrown it. “I haven’t even unpacked yet.”

“ _DANNY_!”

“Alright, alright,” Danny said, crawling off his bed and slinking downstairs. He really would rather have taken a nap.

His parents were already perched in their spots in the living room, a vaguely familiar poster spread out on the coffee table. Danny eyed it, then headed towards his normal spot on the couch. It felt weird, being the only one on the couch. Lopsided, almost.

“We just got home,” Danny complained, “what’s so important?”

His mother took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and glanced at his father. Danny followed the look, but looked back at Maddie when neither spoke. “Well,” she finally started, “we’ve been talking.”

_Obviously_. Danny caught the word before it escaped his mouth. There was always a lot of conversation leading up to one of these family meetings. Danny usually knew what these meetings were going to be about, because his family didn’t have the ability to discuss things in any sort of a quiet tone. This one was a bit of surprise - a lot of the talking had probably happened in the RV, driving back from dropping Jazz off at college, while Danny was listening to music and playing games on his phone. He twitched an eyebrow up, waiting for her to continue.

“Now that you’re the oldest child here, that comes with certain responsibilities and expectations-”

“You’re going to have more chores,” Jack cut in.

“Jack,” she chided. “That’s not… well, yes, we’re going to have to split the chores three ways now instead of four, so we’ll all have more chores… but that’s not the point of this conversation.”

“Then why did you make me get the chore poster?” Jack muttered.

Maddie scowled at the man before turning back to Danny with a smile.

Danny felt the hairs on the back of his neck raise and his stomach tighten. “Um…?”

“You’re older, you’re getting more responsible, and we want to reward that budding maturity. And we want to start getting you on a path towards becoming a young man.”

Danny waited. His mother was being very, very careful with her words. It didn’t bode well. “Okay...” he said into the silence, trying to figure out where this was going. It always paid to be two steps ahead of his parents when they were planning their words this carefully; these sorts of conversations rarely worked out in his favor.

“Starting next week, you’re going to start working for us a few hours each week. Mostly weekends, so you can keep caught up with your school work.”

Danny’s jaw dropped. “But I don’t have time for that!” he protested. “The ghosts don’t-”

“That’s another thing we need to discuss,” she interrupted, her voice going from searching and tentative to more firm. “With your sister here, we had someone to help keep tabs on this ghost hunting thing of yours-”

“ _Thing_?” Danny complained. “But you guys love gho-”

Maddie held up a hand. “-and we certainly don’t want to squash your interests, but it is dangerous. Being out on your own isn’t safe.”

“I have Sam and Tucker!”

“Who are little more responsible than you are,” she said. “Danny-”

Danny bounded to his feet, offended by the implication that the three of them couldn’t handle themselves. They’d done perfectly fine the last two years. “Jazz isn’t even two years older than me. You trusted her to watch me, but not me to watch myself?”

“Jazz is significantly more reasonable and responsible than you are, and you know that.”

“Dad,” Danny turned to his father, who had stayed remarkably quiet. “You agreed with this?”

The man opened his mouth, but closed it again.

“Danny,” his mother said, coming over and pulling him into a hug. “Sweetie. Calm down a bit. You’re reading more into this than there is.” 

Danny held still, feeling her warmth against his back. He let out a short breath. 

“It’s a couple hours a week - you’ll be paid, of course - and a plan to keep tabs on what you’re doing a bit better.” Her voice was quiet in his ear. “And yes, perhaps a few more chores.”

“You don’t need to keep better tabs on me-” Danny protested.

She turned him around by his shoulders, her nose inches from his. “Danny, I should have been keeping better tabs on you for years,” she whispered. “It never should have been Jazz’s job.”

Danny pulled away from her a bit, eyeing her suspiciously. This didn’t sound like her at all. His parents believed in independence and scientific discovery and whatnot. Based on a solid sixteen years of evidence, his parents certainly didn’t believe in… _parenting_. She wasn’t possessed - he’d know. And she didn’t even have an echo of having been possessed. “Who got into your head?” he asked. “You were perfectly fine with it being Jazz’s job yesterday.”

“Jazz and I talked-”

“Of course,” Danny muttered, dropping down onto the couch. His sister had followed him home after all. No doubt this whole conversation was her idea. It certainly helped explain why it was happening so soon after they got home.

“She’s right, Danny,” his father cut in. “Jazz did have a point.”

Danny shot the man an unhappy look. He rubbed a hand over his face. “So what does this mean?”

“I was getting to it,” Maddie said, sitting back down herself and taking a deep breath. “You’re going to work a few hours a week with us-” she gestured to herself and Jack, “like I said, mostly on the weekends. Think of the benefits, Danny. You’ll make a little money, you’ll know a bit more about the science of ghost hunting, and the finances of our business-”

“I don’t want to know the finances of your business,” Danny interrupted. “I’m not _part of your business_.” 

Maddie hesitated a moment. “Sweetie…”

“Mom…” he parroted back.

“You… I…” she seemed uncertain of what to say.

Danny pressed his advantage. His parents hated having these parenting moments. They were never comfortable with it. Over the years, he and Jazz had perfected the art of sidetracking them. “Look, I get the point of this. I’ll help you guys out a bit on the weekends, and I’ll keep you more informed of what I’m doing, right? I promise. Can I go?”

“No.” She straightened her shoulders. “Danny, we need to start being realistic.”

Danny was already half off the couch. He paused, startled. Normally his parents would have taken the out he’d given them, and everyone would have left the meeting happy that they had gotten their point across and nothing would have actually changed. That was the pattern. “Realistic?” he asked.

“It shouldn’t have taken Jazz sitting me down and pointedly saying so, but it did.” His mother sighed. “It shouldn’t have taken this long for me to decide to be a parent, but it did.”

Danny blinked, and glanced over at his father. Jack looked uncomfortable, but he wasn’t leaving. In fact, he looked like he was ready to back up Maddie. 

She continued. “We can’t keep pretending that the future is a long ways away. We can’t keep pretending that the future will just be normal for you. Certain accommodations will need to happen-”

Danny didn’t like the way this conversation was going. 

“-and it just is what it is. Your father and I have to be more involved with what you are doing, to help you stay safe and to start to understand how best to help you. And you’re going to be more involved with what we are doing, to start opening some future paths for you.”

“I already have a future path,” Danny said. “I’m going to college, maybe astronomy or something. None of my future paths involve working for you guys on the weekends.” He shook his head. “I don’t mind it - having a bit more money sounds good and all - but I don’t need to. I could get a job somewhere else too. The Nasty Burger is hiring.”

“And how long would you stay employed?” Maddie asked. “You disappear all the time.”

Danny hesitated. “There’s lots of jobs… but I already said I’d work for you guys on the weekends, right?”

“I’m talking longer term, Sweetie,” she sighed. “You’re only making it through school by the skin of your teeth as it is, with Sam and Tucker basically teaching you what you missed after school. How do you think college will go?”

“I’m not in college yet,” Danny shot back. “So why are we worrying about it?”

“Danny…” she trailed off. 

“What?” he asked after the silence stretched on for almost a minute.

She pressed her eyes closed and rubbed at her face. “Let’s… let’s just deal with today. You’re going to start working with us. We’re going to set up a plan to keep better tabs on you.”

“I already agreed to that. Can I go now?” Danny asked.

For a moment, Danny thought his mother would go with it. She looked tired of the conversation. “No. We need an actual plan. One we’ll actually follow. We all know what will happen if we don’t.”

Danny gritted his teeth. He’d been counting on the lack of follow through. “Like what?” he asked. “You want me to text you? Call you?”

“Yes, that’d be a good start,” she said. “Not Sam or Tucker either - _you_. And two extra hours of unpaid work each time you forget.”

“But sometimes-”

“You, Sweetie. If there’s ever a time when it’s so important you can’t text me, then the two hours of unpaid work would be worth it, right?”

Danny scowled at her. “Why? Why does it have to be me? Why is that so important?”

“Because,” she said, frustratingly not giving an answer. 

“Can I go now, then?”

She let a breath out through her nose. “Fine. Repeat back what you’re going to be doing and you can go.”

“I’m going to text you when there’s a ghost. And I’m going to work a bit for you on the weekends.” Danny got up from the couch. “Can I go now?”

She nodded. 

Danny shot a glance at his father, who nodded as well, and Danny took the opportunity to escape up the stairs, desperate to get away from this conversation.

“You were a big help,” he heard his mother say sarcastically behind him. Danny hesitated at the top step, glancing back. “And Jazz was right. He doesn’t understand at all, does he?”

“And we didn’t even update the chore poster,” his father added.

“Enough with the chores, Jack,” she said. “This is bigger than _chores_. How could we have missed this?” There was a loud sigh. “What sort of rotten parents are we?”


	19. Doors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Jack finds a strange door in Danny's bedroom.

Jack Fenton hated the fact that it was his turn to do the laundry. He despised laundry day. He’d played a best-out-of-five checkers tournament with Mads in an attempt to get out of it. But the woman had won seven straight games, and Jack had finally had to admit defeat.

The old laundry basket was tucked against his hip as he skulked up the stairs. It took only a few minutes to dump his and Mads’ laundry into the basket. 

Next stop was Jazz’s room. He knocked. “Laundry!” he shouted through the door.

“Hang on!” came the answer. There was a scrambling sound from within the room, the door cracked open, and an armload of clothes was added to the basket. “Doing homework,” she said as she closed the door again.

Jack stood there a moment, studying the closed door, before heading towards the last room. The door was slightly ajar. He knocked. “Laundry day, Danno.”

When there was no response, Jack pushed open the door slightly and peeked inside. Empty. Jack certainly wasn’t going to wait around for the boy to return to get his own laundry, so he set down the basket and started to hunt. Jack found a few items under the bed and one set of clothes thrown on the desk chair. He headed towards the closet to see if there was more in there.

Jack opened the closet, and promptly forgot all about laundry day. There was a door inside Danny’s closet. “When…?” Jack tried to think through where it would go, and when it might have been installed. The other side of the closet was the back of the shower in the bathroom. Certainly it didn’t go there. Jack wasn’t the most observant, but he wasn’t _that_ obtuse.

With a glance over his shoulder, Jack reached out and pushed down on the door handle. It clicked, the door opening slightly. Whatever was behind the door glowed. More curious than worried (it couldn’t be a ghost thing; no ghost would mess with the Fenton home), Jack pulled the door the rest of the way open and stepped through.

He stood in a different room. It looked something like their living room - like someone had tried to recreate it from memory. A kitchen was off to the right, stairs to the left, and even a front door. “What in the world?” Jack whispered. He took a few steps forwards, glancing back. He could still see Danny’s room through the door he’d just walked through.

“Danny?” someone called from the kitchen. The voice sounded female.

Jack froze. 

A head poked around the wall. A young woman, black hair, blue eyes. Definitely not a ghost. She blinked at him, looking around with a confused look on his face. “Danny?”

“He’s not here,” Jack said, finding his voice. “I think.”

The girl stayed in the kitchen, mostly hidden by the wall. “Why are you here?” Her tone had changed - there was something dark and foreboding in it now.

“Do you know where ‘here’ is?” Jack looked around, still thrown off by how much it looked like his living room. There were even pictures of his family on the walls. But it was obviously not his living room, because the colors weren’t exactly right, and there was an extra couch. 

“Yeah… the question is do _you_?”

Jack looked back at the girl. “No. I was in Danny’s room, collecting laundry… You know Danny?”

She cocked an eyebrow and stepped into view. “Yeah,” she said. 

Now that she was more visible, Jack could see that she looked like she was wearing one of Danny’s shirts. It was nearly a dress on her. That added to the level of confusion; clearly the girl was no stranger to Danny - but she certainly was to Jack. “Um… Jack Fenton.” He took a few steps forward, holding out his hand.

“No shit,” she said, leaving the pseudo-kitchen to shake his hand. Her grip was insanely tight for a girl that appeared to be maybe eleven or twelve. Almost inhumanly strong. “Danielle.”

This close, Jack could have sworn he saw flecks of ghostly green in her blue eyes. “You’ve heard about me?” Jack asked, flighting back a wince as his fingers started to lose feeling.

“You could say that.” She let go and stepped back, an odd smile on her face. “I’m assuming you’ve never heard of me.”

“Ah… no.” Jack rubbed at his hand, working feeling back into his fingers. “Perhaps you can explain where we are.”

Her odd smile grew. “I certainly could, but Danny might not be happy about it.”

Jack blinked at her. “What?”

She waved her hand dismissively, walking over to the strange doorway that led back to Danny’s room. She peered out into the room. “Why don’t you go home and wait for Danny there. It’s safer.”

“Safer?”

“Safer,” she repeated. When she glanced back at him, the blue in her eyes was gone. Now they were a toxic, glowing green. “See, I don’t want to hurt you. Danny would be quite sad if you got hurt, and I don’t want Danny to be sad.”

“You’re a ghost,” Jack said, stumbling backwards and patting his pockets in search of a weapon. Nothing. He tripped over the second couch and landed on the ground.

“Eh,” she said, wiggling her hand back and forth. “Debatable, really.” This time, her smile was remarkably not human, punctuated with sharp teeth. It was extremely disconcerting - a young girl with inhuman eyes and smile, in Danny’s oversized shirt. “There’s a gun in the second drawer, if you want.”

Jack pulled himself off the ground and felt for the drawer. Like she had suggested, there was one of the older blasters inside. He flicked the button, hearing it whine as it charged. But he didn’t point it at her. “Why did you tell me about this?”

“Like I said, I don’t want to hurt you.” She shook her head and laughed softly. “ _God_ that’s weird to say. I don’t want to hurt Jack Fenton. Makes my brain boil.” The green faded from her eyes, making them a normal human blue again. She rolled them and wandered over to a chair, dropping into it. “I’m going to watch TV. You want to watch TV, or head back to your house?”

“Safer,” Jack repeated dully, still trying to wrap his mind around what was going on.

“Safer,” she agreed, picking up a familiar remote and flicking the TV on. 

Jack swallowed, edging around the room until the door back to his home was right at his back. “Why is it safer? You just said you don’t want to hurt me.”

“Eh,” she said, making that wiggling motion with her hands again. She settled on a show about stars. “Just because I don’t want to doesn’t mean I won’t. Can’t help some things, sometimes.”

“I… I suppose,” Jack said. He glanced over his shoulder, debating going to get Maddie. She’d know what to make of this. “It was nice to meet you Danielle.”

“Wish I could say the same,” she muttered. “Later, _Jack_.”

He hesitated, surprised at how much she’d sounded like Vlad with that last comment. Then he backed out of the strange room and closed the door behind him. He quietly closed the closet door, took a step back, then opened the closet door again. The strange second door was still there, leading to - somehow - an entire house crunched between the walls. 

“Mads?” he whispered, then turned and headed out of the room. “Mads will know what’s going on.” 

She had to. Right?


	20. Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Danny goes in search of a star ghost.

It had taken Danny close to a year and a half to figure out how to travel in the ghost zone, but now that he had - it was _wonderful_. So much easier than in the human world. No need for maps and GPSs, and landmarks.

Danny zipped past some floating islands, laughing at how he had once tried to draw a map of this place. There was no possible way to do it, with how things move and shift randomly. It had been such a colossal waste of time. Even better, his parents were now using some sort of sonar to attempt to do the same thing. It was an endless source of amusement, listening to his parents gripe over supper.

The ghost zone always led you to where you wanted to go. He’d been told that a hundred times by well-meaning ghosts, and Danny had never even paid attention to it. He’d always thought it was some sort of silly saying, almost treating the ghost zone like it had some sort of sense of itself and an ability to think. 

He still didn’t believe that the ghost zone was some sort of huge, sentient thing - but the saying had ended up being true. If you knew where you wanted to go, the ghost zone would take you there.

Danny focused on what he wanted, holding it in his mind until a path shimmered into view before him. It was faint and twisted up and off to the right. Danny experimented with speeding up and slowing down, watching the path shift and move until he liked where it was going. He twisted and rolled with the slight glimmer of light, diving deeper into the ghost zone.

There was a ghost of everything. There was a ghost of the weather, and a ghost of boxes, and a ghost of writing, and a ghost of fear… surely, somewhere, there had to be a ghost of the stars.


	21. Ooze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Danny chases Youngblood, who really just wants to play.

Danny scowled as he stalked down the alleyway between two houses on the old side of town, debating just giving up and going to bed. He was already at a disadvantage, trapped in human form until Tucker figured out how to hack his parents newest tracking software, and Youngblood was one of the worst ghosts to have to track. With the others, Danny could at least count on the occasional scream to keep him on the right path. But most kids were asleep in bed, Youngblood was invisible to everyone. He was having to track the faintest trail of ectoplasm the ghost had left in the air behind him.

Besides, he had a rather large test tomorrow. Bed sounded good. His feet slowed as his brain turned towards the idea of just heading home. How much damage could the ghost do in one night? Youngblood was generally more a nuisance than a danger.

“ _AAAH_!” came a scream from further ahead.

With a sigh, Danny shifted to a spring, weaving between the homes. Somewhere ahead, Youngblood was doing something. He came around a corner, vaulted over a small fence, and skidded to a stop on a dirt alley. 

Youngblood, dressed as a pirate today, was hovering over a water hydrant that was spilling water everywhere, laughing up a storm. “I got one!” he told the skeletal bird that was following him around. “Avast!” He held up a sword.

“You got one, what?” Danny asked, jogging towards the ghost and keeping his tone conversational. If he could get the ghost off guard, he could catch Youngblood in the Thermos without any effort.

The ghost flinched. “You!” He pointed the sword at Danny. “Ye harr!”

“Do you have any idea what those pirate words even mean?” Danny asked. He stopped just out of reach of the water’s blast. The little little drifts of spray hitting his arms felt cold.

“Of course I do,” Youngblood argued. “All pirate words mean the same thing: _fight_!”

“No, they don’t.” Danny studied the water, keeping his hands (and the Thermos) behind his back and out of sight. “Why the hydrant, anyways?”

“ _Pirate_ ,” Youngblood said sarcastically, pointing the sword towards his chest. “Water, right? Can’t be a pirate without water. Besides, did you see that lady?” He cackled, tumbling upside down in the air. “Soaking wet, shrieking her head off.”

Danny hummed. “You could have hurt her. The water’s coming out kind hard.”

The idea went right over the ghost’s head - it always did. Most ghosts just didn’t understand. Instead, Youngblood raised his sword over his head. “Fight me, halfa-scur! These be my waters!”

“Uh, no thanks.” Danny shifted the Thermos behind his back, subtly twisting the top off. “Not in the mood for pirates today. Cowboys - now that’d be different.”

The little ghost’s eyes light up, a huge grin splitting his face from ear to ear. “I could change quick! You could be a cowboy and I could be a ruffian! I could be trying to wrangle your herd!” His sword swirled into a lasso. “Ye-hah!”

Danny winced, feeling a stab of guilt at the excitement on the ghost’s face. “Um, not tonight. Just getting too late. How about we get some sleep tonight and play later?”

The rope fell to the ground. “No. Let’s play.” His tone had shifted to something dark. The stars and moon overhead dimmed and the ghost’s glow picked up a level. The smile turned evil - sharp teeth poking through. “ _Now_.”

“Next time,” Danny said, bringing the Thermos around, pointing it towards Youngblood, and thumbing the switch. It lit up, encasing the young ghost in a swirl of light.

“ _Let me go_!” Youngblood wailed. “ _I just wanted to play_!” 

The ghost flailed, trying desperately to fly away. Danny yelped in surprise when the ghost slammed against the Thermos, nearly pulling it out of his grip. “Stop that!” he yelped, losing his balance at the sudden yank. The Thermos sucked in Youngblood just before Danny hit the spray of water from the hydrant.

He spluttered and gasped, feeling the hard slam of water against his side as he struggled to stand. Nearly to his feet, the combination of slimy mud and persistent spray knocked him down again. He landed flat on his stomach - now officially covered in cold mud from head to toe.

It took several seconds for him to climb out of the water and make it to a safe distance away, dripping cold mud from every bit of his body. “Yay,” he said, wiping the worst off his face. “Thanks, Youngblood.”

He could have sworn he heard a giggle come from inside the Thermos. 

He held the Thermos up to his face. “Oh, don’t start. I will fill this Thermos with mud, so help me.” He gave it a firm shake. Then he shuddered, feeling a glob of mud oozing down his back. “Yuck. Shower time.”


	22. Lightning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: corpses, described gore and death. Rated Teen.
> 
> My headcanon about how Vlad created his clones.

“Haven’t you ever read ‘ _Frankenstein_ ’? This is a bad idea.”

Vlad ignored the ghost’s commentary, pushing the last connector into place. He’d been planning this for years, purchased nearly two million dollars worth of equipment, and committed at least nine felonies at this point. One stupid ghost rambling on about a grade-school novel wasn’t going to stop him.

“You’re a rather sick bastard.”

He had to give that a small hum in response as he stepped back and surveyed his work. To the outside word, his personality type _was_ probably somewhere near ‘bastard’. But he’d long since given up caring what other people thought of him, or what rules they’d put in place. Rules were for normal people with normal problems - they didn’t fit him anymore.

“A sick bastard with a bad idea.”

Walking past the chatty ghost’s cage, Vlad flicked his finger on a small button. The cage flared with light, and the ghost’s annoying mutterings turned into a shriek of pain, then silence. The three other ghosts cowered backwards.

He turned around, allowing his cape to swirl out dramatically. This moment, the encapsulation of years of work, deserved a bit of drama. Four level two ghosts, chosen specifically for their subservient personalities - although the cat-looking one appeared to need a bit of work. A computer with an incredibly complex program written by a dozen dark web programmers. Four pods, with the bodies of four carefully selected children inside between the ages of ten and fourteen. And a huge vat of specially created ectoplasm, enriched with Daniel’s DNA, slowly pumping the caustic liquid through the veins of each corpse.

Since the ectoplasmic saturation process had begun almost immediately after death, no decay had set in even though they’d been dead for several months. Each child possessed the appropriate genetic structure to handle the intense saturation: certain protein in their cells that would be able to handle the foreign material without destroying the cells, or causing horrific mutations. It had taken so very long to locate each child.

The children had looked so different when he’d started, but the ectoplasmic modifications were affecting their appearance. Skin had turned to Daniel’s tone, hair was now growing in black, and even their skeletal structure appeared to be changing. Vlad grinned. Soon he would have four clones of Daniel.

“Perfect,” he whispered.

“Not perfect,” came a quiet voice.

Vlad twisted around and glared at the cat-ghost. It cowered back from him. “You’d better not ruin this for me,” he snarled.

“As if I have the option,” it whispered. 

Vlad scowled and turned back to his project. The only thing missing was a humongous blast of energy - one strong enough to recreate a portal accident and bond the ghosts with their new bodies. The Amity Park power grid would simply not be enough. After that _idiot_ Jack started his portal without thinking through the power requirements, he caused a million and a half dollars of damage to the power grid and the local power station. Certain controls had been put in place that would not allow anyone else to draw enough current to come anywhere near close enough.

A huge crack of thunder shook the mansion and Vlad glanced over at the indicator attached to a huge bank of specially designed batteries. 

Perhaps the ‘ _Frankenstein_ ’ reference was a bit apt. Two large antennas had been attached to the roof, and that first lightning strike had gotten the batteries 42% full. One more good strike, or two smaller ones, and he’d have enough charge.

He let out a breath and rubbed his hands together. 

“You’re really going with the complete evil villain persona, huh?” the cat-ghost said.

Vlad didn’t even bother pushing the button to punish the creature, keeping his gaze on his marvelous machine. “One more lightning strike and you’ll be mine. Your memories wiped, your core forever attached to that body, and you’ll be mine forever.”

“Can I get a female body? I’d rather be a girl,” it complained.

The lights flickered, and there was a bone-jarring sound that echoed through the basement lab. “Ooh, that was a big one,” Vlad laughed. The indicator was rising as batteries absorbed the energy of the strike. 98%. “Good enough,” he said. He walked forwards, feeling like this was sort of an historic moment.

First person to clone humans successfully.

First person to deliberately create halfas without the use of a portal.

First person to show that human-ectoplasm infusion could be successful.

He pushed the ‘start’ button.


	23. Mask

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> An introspective piece about Valerie contemplating Phantom.

Valerie couldn’t put her finger on when it started. 

Perhaps it was yesterday, when she’d tracked down a ghost that was watching birds in the park. Literally. With old-fashioned binoculars. Completely unaware of the danger he was in, chatting away at her about this bird and that for almost fifteen long minutes until she’d finally blasted him to get him to move along.

Or perhaps it was last week, when Phantom had rescued the little kid that had gotten lost. Valerie had waited in the woods until the ghost had dropped the child off and gotten his accolades before chasing him off.

Or perhaps it was the week before that, when she’d ended up playing with a cat ghost for nearly a half-hour. She originally was going to blast it out of existence, but the ghost chasing her laser sight had been… _cute_ wasn’t the right word. But something. 

Or perhaps it was last month, when she’d been trapped at work and unwilling to say anything, and she’d actually served a ghost lunch. It had ordered two double burgers with extra sauce and a chocolate shake. The ghost had poured its french fries onto the burger, smashing the bug down on top, and dunking the whole concoction into the shake before taking a bite. It’d made a royal mess and disappeared before it was even half done. She’d hunted for it later, but never found it.

Or perhaps it was seven weeks ago, when Valerie had realized humans and ghosts could be one and the same.

But no matter when it was, Valerie found herself chasing Phantom around after school today half-heartedly. He’d chased the Box Ghost out of the recycling plant and captured it for the nth time - which Valerie was struggling to see as a _bad thing_ done by an _evil ghost_. She blasted him a few times, watching him easily swerve away from each flash of light, and scowled.

“What’s wrong with you today?” Phantom said, whipping up and around and appearing right next to her. “You okay?”

Valerie flinched, her gun coming up reflexively. “I’m _hunting_ you,” she shot back.

He rolled his eyes. “Obviously. Want to make the hunting worth _my_ time?” His tone was sarcastic. “Or can we just leave off for today?”

She scowled and thumbed the tigger. The gun whined painfully, the charge building up in the capacitor. “Or I could blast you now and just be done with it.”

“How about... you won’t?” Phantom taunted. 

Finger tightened and the blast ruffled the ghost’s hair as he ducked out of the way. “Want to rethink that?” she said.

“You missed,” Phantom said, running a hand through his hair. “And I needed a haircut. Thanks!” He tossed her a horribly cheesy smile and took off again.

Valerie took off after him, but it only took a few minutes for him to vanish in the aether. She slowed and stopped, still a bit off-kilter. That was a weird hunt - the forth or fifth in a row that had ended in the realization that her anger felt almost like a mask, something put on for show. 

With a sigh, she headed for home. 


	24. Isolation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Maddie got herself contaminated with ectoplasm. Now she's trapped in isolation with Vlad, hoping the ectoplasm will dissipate.

Maddie picked up her recorder, thumbing the switch. “Day two of isolation. Things are going… decently. I haven’t killed anyone yet,” she glanced down at the man sleeping on the floor, “although today is a new day.” Letting go of the switch, she sighed and stretched, feeling her back pop into alignment. Although the cot was softer than the floor, it certainly was far from comfortable.

Maneuvering herself off the cot, she stepped over the sleeping form on the ground. She hesitated, debating letting him sleep (and therefore allowing herself some quiet) before deciding the opportunity was too good to pass up. As she walked past towards the bathroom, her foot ‘accidentally’ slammed into his stomach. “Ooh, sorry,” she cooed with a yawn. “I didn’t see you there.”

“No worries,” Vlad groaned, curled up in a ball and awake. “Barely felt it.”

Maddie held back the snort of disbelief. She made it to the tiny bathroom before she rolled her eyes and set herself doing her morning activities. Without access to a shower, there was only so much that could be done, but her teeth were brushed and her hair settled in short order. She took off yesterday’s clothes, rumpled from having slept in them, and changed into a new set. Studying herself in the mirror, she pushed her shoulders back and raised her chin, practicing her posture of aloof indifference. 

Then she sighed and dropped herself onto the toilet seat, chin in hands, and glared down at the ground. Two weeks. Fourteen whole days trapped in a small room with Vlad Masters. Maddie had barely made it through yesterday. She would be a wreck by the end of today.

She had no idea how long she sat there, but eventually there was a soft knock at the door. 

“Mads?” 

The woman tensed, hating when he used Jack’s nickname for her. “What?”

“I… May I use the facilities as well?”

She thought about continuing to sit there. The door was locked - there was little he could do about it - but then scowled and got up. The last thing she needed was for him to be relieving himself somewhere else. Thirteen days of smelling _that_ would add a whole pile of pain on the misery of this experience. The door unlocked and she pushed past him.

“Thank you, my dear,” Vlad said, heading into the bathroom.

Teeth gritted, Maddie headed over to the tiny kitchenette and got herself busy making two cups of coffee. One for her to drink, and one for her to throw on Vlad the second he started doing something inappropriate.

Oh, how she wished she could go back in time and change certain decisions. The experiment he’d set up had been interesting - interesting enough that she’d headed over to his house to help out. Jack had finally set his mind to cleaning the lab, and she’d allowed him to stay home to do that - just her and Vlad running the tests. The first set of results had produced groundbreaking results - groundbreaking enough that she’d set aside the worst of the man’s behavior and stayed to run through the experiment a second time. The instabilities in the testing results had started to grow, but the results were important enough that she’d ignored the issues until it was too late. 

Now she was contaminated. Her and Vlad. Contaminated and trapped under supervised isolation for two weeks. 

Coffee made, she took the two cups over to the small table and set them down. Sipping at the first cup, she picked up some of the paperwork and started looking it over. The results of bioaccumulative ectoplasmic exposure. The first experiment’s data was usable. The second’s was likely garbage, since they’d suffered such a catastrophic collapse towards the end, but Maddie was eager to search through the data to try to identify what had gone wrong.

“Oh, good. Coffee,” Vlad said as he emerged from the bathroom. He sat down and reached for the cup. “Thank you.”

Maddie - noting he’d sat at the other side of the table instead of scooching right next to her like he’d done yesterday - allowed him to take the cup. Perhaps the man could be taught. She hummed a noncommittal response.

“No creamer?” the man asked. “Heathens,” he scoffed.

Maddie didn’t bother glancing up from the paperwork. They were in isolation - the main creature comforts of home were absent. They were lucky to have coffee at all.

“Why are you working so early in the morning?”

“I like working,” Maddie said, leaving unsaid the sentiment that the only other thing she had to do was talk to _him_ \- and she certainly wanted to do that as little as possible. “And I’d like to figure out why the second experiment went so wrong.”

“It didn’t go _that_ wrong,” Vlad muttered. “Small miscalculation, I’m sure.”

She disagreed with the sentiment. She’d ended up in isolation with the smarmy man for two weeks. The experiment had gone very wrong, even if it was just a small miscalculation. And they didn’t have any idea of the long term consequences of their exposure. Their genetic structure could be permanently compromised.

It was hard, trying to think through the experiment without talking aloud, especially after twenty years of that being the practice. If Jack were here, she’d babble away. Between the two of them, they would be able to spot the flaw. She glanced up at Vlad with a sigh. In college, she’d thought the man was competent. Not brilliant like Jack, but at least _competent_. When Jack had rekindled the friendship last year, she’d downgraded the adjective to ‘somewhat skilled’. But as more and more data had racked up about his borrowed, modified, and plain-old stolen technology - Maddie had decided the man was inept, integrating, obsequious, and indolent. 

Would talking aloud help? Or would he be so inclined to interject idiotic and vaguely mysogenistic comments that she wouldn’t be able to keep a thought straight in her head?

Besides, Maddie found it difficult to trust him. He hadn’t looked surprised enough when the experiment had cascaded around them. But certainly he wouldn’t cause potentially devastating ectoplasmic exposure on purpose. 

There was a knock at the door. Maddie looked up and watched someone clothed from head to toe in level 1 hazmat suit enter their room, carrying several trays. The face through the hood looked female, but the voice was deep enough to be a male. “Since you’re both up, the doctors need samples.” 

Maddie’s nose scrunched. “Fine,” she said.

“Has my personal physician checked in yet?” Vlad asked stiffly. 

“Not sure,” the nurse said. 

Vlad crossed his arms and legs. “I am refusing all medical treatment and testing until my physician has approved it.”

The nurse hesitated. “I’ll ask. We’ll get started with you, then, Ms Fenton. I’ve got a couple blood draws, a skin scrape, a urine test, etcetera, etcetera.”

“I highly recommend you refrain from testing, my dear,” Vlad said from his chair. “My personal physician-”

“Isn’t covered by my insurance,” Maddie said. “And isn’t any better than the wonderful people who have been treating us at this clinic for the last twenty years.” She sat still as the nurse ran her a variety of tests, checked her heart and lungs, drained eight small vials of blood from her arm, samples were taken from her inner cheeks, and a small jar was handed to her for urine. She vanished off into the bathroom, listening through the door as the nurse tried to coax Vlad into at least giving samples.

“My medical history is too complicated,” Vlad said dismissively, “as I’m sure my physician will inform you.”

“That’s fine, but I’m not getting dressed back up in this ensemble for quite some time,” the nurse responded. “Ms Fenton’s results will be back by the time I’m back in here.”

“I’ll live with that,” Vlad said.

Maddie washed her hands, and handed the cup over to the nurse with a smile. “Thank you,” she said politely. 

The nurse smiled back and gestured towards the trays. “Breakfast and lunch. Also a nice, long survey to fill out. Sounds like somebody will be back mid-afternoon, doctor would like it done by then. Need anything else?”

“Cell phone?” Maddie asked hopefully. “I’d love to talk to my kids.”

“I’ll ask about it.” And with that, the nurse was gone. 

Maddie grabbed the trays, sorting out the one that had breakfast on it, and sat down at the table. Vlad joined her - this time, he scooted his chair around the circular table and sat down inches from her. She sent him a meaningful look. He either ignored it or didn’t notice. Maddie picked up her fork, fisted it like she was headed to a knife fight, and held it over Vlad’s leg. She sent him a second meaningful look. This time, he paid attention and scooted away.

The fork clattered as it fell to the floor. Maddie blinked down at it, a bit startled, and reached down to grab it. 

“Clumsy today?” Vlad said with a tone that was almost purring.

She scowled at him, took a bite of her eggs, and picked up a page full of the data from their experiment. If she was really on top of things, it would be close to lunch before she’d need to look at him again.

This was going to be a _very_ long two weeks.


	25. Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Tucker is attempting to teach himself ectoplasmic electrical engineering.

“Tucker! What are you doing!” Sam’s screech echoed through the Foley’s kitchen.

Tucker winced. “Yep. You really are your mother’s daughter when you do that,” he said, rubbing at his ears. “Wow, your voice carries well.”

“That’s… that’s _mine_ ,” she said, keeping her voice a bit lower and sitting down in one of the chairs. She surveyed the damage.

“And it’s being sacrificed for the greater good.” Tucker grinned, just a bit sheepishly. “ _Greater good_ , I promise.”

“You’re stealing me a new one, then,” she said. She reached forwards and picked up a bit of rubberized plastic - the remains of the blaster’s handle. Hours and hours of practice had gotten this one perfectly worn in. And now it was in pieces. Broken. “A better one,” she added on.

“On it,” Tucker muttered, going back to whatever he had been doing. He was using a skewer, slowly tracing it along wires, now and then writing something down in his notebook. 

Sam set down the handle bits with a sigh and glanced around the table. Scattered amongst several library books was the remains of her favorite blaster. It had an impressive number of parts inside of it - few she recognized. There was the ‘battery’; it was more a glowing vial of ectoplasm than a traditional battery. Trigger mechanism. The specially coated (and therefore slightly glowing) wires that transferred the goop from the battery. The nozzle that sprayed the ectoplasm in the air, much like a specialty squirt gun. The tiny spark plug at the end that energized the liquid into a blast of vaporized energy.

And what looked like a bazillion more wires and circuit boards and who knew what else.

Waiting until Tucker stopped looking quite so focused, Sam picked up one of the books. It was an electrical engineering book. She thumbed through the pages in the section Tucker had it open to - diagrams of wiring. “Alright, I’m intrigued. What _are_ you doing?”

Tucker hummed and chewed on the end of his pencil, not looking up from his notebook. “I’m figuring out how it works.”

“Great,” Sam said, “but why do you care how it works? We know the basics.”

“You’re okay with basics, I’m not. I want to understand it.”

“You couldn’t have picked something else to dismantle?” Sam muttered. “It’s not like we’re low on Fenton tech.”

“Nope. Greater good, remember.” Tucker waved his hand and glanced up at her with a sigh. “Look, Sam, I’m not you.”

She arched an eyebrow, confused. 

“I can’t shoot the ghosts, I can’t run around and keep up with the ghosts, I can’t even keep them occupied with witty repartee until someone else is ready to blast them. I’ve watched enough hero movies to know exactly my place in this team: tech support.”

“Tech support,” Sam repeated.

Tucker nodded. “I’ve already got the coding down. I’m practically a coding prodigy. But I’m a bit useless if I don’t know the physical part of technology: the engineering side.” He tapped a finger down on the book. “That’s what I need to learn.”

“With _my_ blaster.”

“With _your_ blaster,” Tucker agreed. “It’s the only thing we have from the model three generation - without stealing something else - and I don’t want to bring Danny in on this. He’s already stressed enough and doesn’t need to know yet.”

Sam waited a beat, hoping her brain would clue her in as to why the model of her blaster was important. Nothing. “Okay… but why is the model important?”

“Because Danny’s parents can’t stick with a technology pattern to save their souls,” Tucker muttered. “They’re like dogs in a treat store, jumping from thought to thought. Each generation is so very different. I don’t know enough about engineering yet to extrapolate to different models. I’ve got to understand _this_ pattern.”

“And model three…?”

“Is the generation where the city bought all the ghost shields, deflectors, and blasters. You know, the ones that keep stopping Danny dead in his tracks.”

Sam nodded, catching on. She ran her tongue over her teeth. “I suppose that’s a decent explanation.”

“Decent?” Tucker grumbled. “I’m teaching myself advanced electrical engineering, combined with a field of technology that didn’t exist a few years ago and that only a handful of people know, _and_ managing to pass civics… and you’re calling it _decent_?”

“Hey, I’m passing civics too,” Sam said.

“You’re getting a D,” Tucker shot back.

“Technically passing.”

Tucker sighed. “Anyways, I have a headache. Let’s round up Danny and get a burger.”

“And just leave this out on the table?” Sam gestured towards the mess.

Tucker snagged the battery - the only thing that glowed bright enough to give away it’s Fenton-ness - and nodded, stuffing the battery into his bag. “My parents know something of what I’m doing. It’s fine. We’re planning on eating in the living room and watching a movie tonight anyways.”

“Okay,” Sam said. “Nasty Burger?”

“Where else? Valerie is working today, and I am due for another episode of watching Danny try to not give away the fact that he knows Valerie hunts ghosts while also trying to commiserate about how much ghost hunting eats into your life while also trying not to flirt with her too much because she dumped him hard but he still likes her and wants to be her friend.”

Sam laughed. “That’ll be fun to watch him put his foot in his mouth several times.”

“Oh yeah. And it’ll be awesome watching you seethe when he manages to succeed enough to get Val to smile.”

She punched him lightly on the arm. “Watch it.”

“I am watching it. And I’ll be watching you pretend you don’t care about Danny flirting with Valerie instead of you,” Tucker taunted, before jumping down the steps and taking off for Danny’s house with a laugh.

Sam shook her head and followed at a more stately pace. Tucker would get what was coming to him eventually. Sam had a _plan_.


	26. Strange

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Introspective piece about Danny getting used to his new halfa senses.

Danny had been a freaky human/ghost hybrid for one day, eight hours, nineteen minutes, and thirty-seven seconds. And he (already) couldn’t take his strange new senses anymore. Everything was too _loud_ and too _bright_ and his clothes felt _weird_ and supper tasted _wrong_ and there were at least two new senses that Danny didn’t have words for yet… but they were also _too much_. 

The sun had set when Danny escaped his mother’s grasp and climbed up to the roof of his house. The horizon burned with a dozen different colors, but the giant glowing orb was thankfully gone. Before the accident, he would have simply called it the Sun, a common yellow dwarf main sequence star, and easily spouted facts about its intense fusion reaction that threw light and heat 93 million miles to his home. 

Now the thing in the sky that had hung in the sky all day didn’t quite seem to fit the word ‘Sun’. He couldn’t look at it - too bright, _especially_ now - but it just wasn’t the Sun anymore. There was something creepy and pressing about how the Sun’s energy felt on his skin. His mind had cooked up the image that the little star had eyes, thousands and millions of eyes, glaring at his soul. He could feel it watching his every move.

He sighed and sank back against the warm roof, staring up at the darkening sky. The colors staining the sky and the clouds slowly faded; some of them were colors Danny had no words for. The moon was huge and heavy on the horizon, working its way up into the sky. Trying to relax the tension in his shoulders from his mother’s constant hovering, Danny waited for the stars.

Little specks of light started appearing in the sky earlier than they normally did. Danny knew some of them by heart. He muttered to himself as they appeared, cataloging them like someone was sitting next to him. “That one over there isn’t a star, it’s Venus. And that one over there is really a geosynchronous satellite - also not a star, although it took me months to figure that one out. That one though, that one’s Arcturus - an actual star, although the word ‘star’ doesn’t really fit to me. Arcturus’s radius is bigger than the orbit of _Mars_. Those three stars make the belt of the constellation Orion, which means that bright one is Sirius, and that one is Betelgeuse, and did you know that Betelgeuse is going to go supernova soon?”

It was relaxing, hearing himself talk and recite facts. He felt the tension in his neck fade as he continued to blather along about stars and constellations and anything else he could think of. The slight headache vanished along with a strange pain in his feet and, even though the tag in his shirt still itched and his clothes were too scratchy and his socks were too tight, he almost felt like he could just fall asleep, lying on the roof, watching the stars.

He never had the best view from his roof. Amity Park wasn’t that big a place, twenty-five thousands residents or so, but the light pollution still made a lot of the night sky invisible. Still, he’d always contented himself with the hundreds of stars he could see. He figured that by the time he’d learned them all - their names, their types, their constellations, their stories - he’d be old enough to move out and find a better place to live, with more stars to see. 

He lay there, watching the stars, and knowing exactly when he’d be able to see all there was to see. But tonight… tonight the sky didn’t stop at hundreds. 

Eyes widening, Danny sat up as the stars _kept coming_. A smear of light that Danny knew was the Milky Way appeared in the southwestern sky. Millions of stars hovered overhead by the time the last light seeped out of the sunset, and Danny stared. 

He’d seen pictures taken from the desert, hundreds of miles from the nearest town. He and his mother took a trip each year to see the sky and watch for meteors. He knew what the sky looked like when there was very little light pollution. It looked like _this_. He stared at it in wonder.

His strange new senses had erased the light pollution from the sky. Even better, the stars were glowing in new and different colors, gleaming and glittering in new ways, a rainbow of lights across the night. 

Danny stared at them for so long that the moon had arced high into the sky and his mother was calling for him from downstairs. “Coming!” he shouted through the access, slowly climbing to his feet. He turned in a little circle, taking it all in one last time. 

For the first time since the accident, Danny smiled.


	27. Buried

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Danny, Tucker, and Sam are searching for something they buried long ago.

“Why do I have to carry the shovel?” Tucker whined, deliberately walking a bit slower and dragging his feet. “It weighs a ton.”

“It’s a Fenton Shovel,” Danny said, walking backwards a moment to smile at him. “Got my dad’s face on it. See?”

Sam shoved him lightly. “That doesn’t explain why it’s so heavy.”

“Or why I have to carry it,” Tucker added. “I’m both the weakest and the slowest of the three of us.”

Sam smirked. “If your hands aren’t full, you play with your phone. Which means you’re not looking where you’re going. Which means we’ll take even _longer_ to get there because you’ll be walking at a snail’s pace.”

“And it’s ghost-proof,” Danny added. “Thus the weight. It has a lead core.”

Tucker gave the shovel a side-look and held it a bit further away from his head. “Isn’t lead, you know, toxic? I saw on the news-”

“If you’re really worried about toxicity I wouldn’t start with the lead,” Danny muttered just loud enough for Tucker to hear.

“Great,” Tucker moaned. “I’d drop the shovel and leave it here, if I weren’t so interested in why we need it.”

Danny laughed. “For a prodigy, you certainly have a bad memory.”

Tucker scowled and followed the two, trying to wrack his brain to remember what in the world they would need a shovel for, while also trying not to smile at the way his two friends were _almost_ holding hands. Really, it made carrying the toxic, heavy shovel worth it.

The three wound their way to the park, through the scattered trees and kids playing frisbee, and towards the small creek that ran alongside the fence on the far side. By the time Danny and Sam came to a stop next to the creek, Tucker was panting and out of breath. He dumped the shovel on the ground and collapsed onto his back. “Oh my _god_ ,” he said. “My arms are like limp noodles!”

“Weakling,” Sam said, picking up the shovel with one hand and resting it lightly on her shoulder. She glanced at Danny. “The shovel _is_ very heavy, Danny.”

“Ghost proof. Lead. I already said this,” Danny said. He was walking back and forth along the edge of the creek. “Now shush. I’m trying to remember.”

“Trying to remember what?” Tucker asked from his spot on the ground. “What would you need a shovel for-” he stopped, a vague memory from years and years ago tickling his mind.

“The boy remembers,” Danny muttered.

“Seriously?” Tucker said, sitting up. He sat up, remembering the treasure box the two of them hid when they were younger. “There’s no way that’s still here.”

“No way what’s here?” Sam asked.

Danny started wandering down the side of the creek, headed towards a large tree. “Didn’t we bury it by a tree?”

“Bury _what_ by a tree?” Sam said, one hand on her hip and one very heavy shovel over her shoulder, standing next to Tucker instead of following Danny.

“It was an apple tree, Dude. That’s a pine tree.” Tucker leveraged himself to his feet. “I remember getting hit by an apple when we were digging. I think it’s that one.” He pointed towards a tree a bit further on, covered in flowers. 

Danny shrugged and changed direction. Sam still wasn’t moving. “ _What_ are we looking for?” she asked, sounding exasperated. 

“Danny and I used to play pirates as kids,” Tucker said. “We buried a treasure chest full of ‘valuables’.”

“And I need them back,” Danny called over his shoulder. He made it to the tree and circled it, studying the ground. 

Tucker jogged over to the tree, Sam keeping on his heels. “It was the better part of a decade ago. Why do you suddenly need the stuff back?”

Danny stood still, looking around. “Slight clarification - my _dad_ needs the treasure back. He’s got some invention going on, is tearing the house apart looking for them, and I’m positive I never got permission to play with them.”

Tucker shrugged. “It was, what, nine years ago? Just tell him he forgot he gave you permission.”

Danny shot him a look. “Do you know what we buried?”

“No.” 

Sam set the shovel down. “I’m definitely curious,” she said, “but couldn’t we have brought a lighter shovel? I’m feeling bad for Tucker. This thing weighs, like, fifty pounds.”

“Ghost proof,” Danny said for the third time.

“Why did we need a ghost-proof shovel to dig up a kid’s treasure?” Tucker asked. Then he pointed towards the side of the tree closer to the creek. “Over there.”

Danny hummed, wandered over to the spot, and stared down at the ground. “Because we were apparently playing with - and buried - a real, actual treasure.”

Tucker blinked. “Like… _real_?”

“Yeah.” Danny grinned at him. “Like, for real. The crystals are actually worth quite a bit of money. They’re special sorts of gems that focus ectoplasmic radiation, or something. My dad needs them for whatever it is he’s building.”

“We buried real crystals.”

“Real crystals with ghost energy in them,” Danny said, “thus the shovel.” He pointed at the ground several feet from the tree. “Right here.”

Sam picked up the shovel and walked over. “You’re sure? This is a killer shovel for not being sure.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. They have ghost energy in them. I can tell.” Danny crouched down, stuffed his arms through the ground, and pulled a beat-up and disintegrating shoebox out of the ground without disturbing the grass. “See? They’re rIght here. Dig.”

Tucker scoffed. “Why? You pulled it out of the ground already.”

Danny stared at him, then down at the box in his arms. “Ah, yes.” He grinned sheepishly. “Or we could do it that way.” He peeled open the box, the lid tearing several times. Inside, half a dozen translucent rocks glittered in the sun. “Perfect.”

“Seriously?” Sam said. “Danny, this shovel is heavy!”

“You didn’t carry the thing all the way here,” Tucker scowled. “You aren’t the one who should be complaining!”

“Guys, it doesn’t matter. We got the gems, Dad can stop tearing the house apart, and we can go see a movie.” Danny picked the gems out of the old box and stuffed them into his pocket. The box dropped to the ground and Danny brushed off his hands, climbing to his feet.

Sam frowned. “Littering.”

“I wasn’t going to leave it,” Danny protested, stooping down to grab the box.

“No, I got the box,” Tucker cut in, snagging the remains of the box. “You get the shovel. You’re the one that made us lug it all the way here for no reason.”

“Ghost proof,” Danny said, gesturing toward his chest, “remember?”

Sam stuffed it into Danny’s arms. “ _Half_ ghost, remember? You carry the toxic gardening equipment.”

Danny sighed dramatically, causing Sam and Tucker to laugh. “Let’s get the stuff home.”


	28. Diner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Danny meets an unusual character in a Ghost Zone diner.

There are certain places in the ghost zone where truces reign that are nearly older than time itself. Places of power that are both hot and cold at the same time, light and dark, centers of gravity where none exist. They showed up in many different ways, always changing, but somehow always the same. 

This one was currently a diner. And it was where Danny was meeting someone, at Clockwork’s request.

He didn’t quite know what to expect as he pushed open the door. A little bell jingled over the door. Danny glanced up at it in surprise, letting the door fall shut behind him.

The diner was straight out of the 60s. Black and white tile floor. Aqua ceiling. Bright red counter with round, red stools nestled up against them. Booths rimmed the walls and a jukebox in the corner was playing a boppy tune. Despite the pleasant atmosphere, the little hairs on Danny’s neck were standing on end. There was something here that was not right.

“Hey, kid.”

Danny blinked at the cliqued woman running the diner. She had a notebook in one hand and a pot of coffee in the other. “Hi,” he said. “I’m here to-”

“Over there,” she said, gesturing with her head towards one of the farthest booths. She moved on, pausing only long enough to fill a cup of coffee at a table.

“Creepy,” Danny muttered. Wanting to get this over with as fast as possible and get back home, Danny wandered towards the booth the woman had pointed out.

A cloaked figure sat in the corner, somehow ringed with shadows despite the bright lights of the diner. There was a powerful aura to the being, and Danny felt a shiver run down his back. It moved slowly, the blank hole where it’s face should be turning to look at him. It looked just like the images of the grim reaper from Sam’s creepier books.

“Hi,” Danny said, giving it a little half-wave. “Clockwork… he sent me…”

It gestured towards the other side of the booth.

“I’d rather stand,” Danny said, shifting his weight from foot to foot, feeling uncomfortable. Clockwork had said the ghost wouldn’t hurt him, but Danny figured better safe than sorry. 

The held out arm didn’t move. The cloaked head shifted just a touch.

“Fine,” Danny whispered, sliding into the booth. “I’m Danny.” He held out his hand to shake.

The figure didn’t take it. 

After a moment, Danny let his hand fall to the table. Resting his elbows on the table and lacing his fingers together, Danny said, “So… what’s up?”

He couldn’t see the figure’s face - he wasn’t sure the thing had a face - but he could have sworn he saw the ghost smile. “It’s long past time we chatted, young prince.” The creature's voice sounded like a snake’s rattle, and the feel of it caused ice water to pour down Danny’s spine.

“Uh-huh,” Danny said, sitting back and fighting down a shiver. “Who are you?”

“In charge,” it answered simply. It sat forwards, sleeved arms resting on the table. 

The diner waitress stopped by, dropping a cop in front of Danny’s spot and pouring it full of steaming coffee. “Enjoying yourself?” she asked.

“Always,” the creature responded as she refilled its cup. It waved the end of its loose sleeves over the cup, and the level of the coffee lowered. “Delicious as always.”

Danny didn’t bother to answer or even take a sip. The waitress didn’t appear to care, wandering away without further comment. “Why am I here?”

“We have an issue at hand. It’s not particularly a big issue, in the grand scheme of things.” It magicked a packet of creamer out of nowhere, poured it into the coffee, and then turned its attention back to Danny. “Beside the taste of the coffee here. It’s quite inedible. Creamer?” Another packet appeared on the table.

“No thank you.” Danny pushed the coffee a bit away from him.

“Perhaps smart. No telling what’s in it today.” It waved a sleeve over the cup again, and again the level of the coffee lowered. “Now that is much better.”

Danny waited through a few long seconds of silence. “What’s the issue?” he asked.

“Ah yes. You defeated Pariah Dark.”

“I had lots of help…” 

“Help or otherwise, the Realms have decided it is you that defeated Pariah Dark, ruler of this section of our world, and as such, have proclaimed you his heir.”

Danny blinked. “What?”

“You are the heir of this realm. It means little, honestly. A title, if you are into such formalities. Our world is not one that requires a hands-on ruler, as there are no taxes or laws or such that would need leadership.” The figure drank more of it’s coffee. 

“I’m… I’m not… I’m just a kid-”

“I am exceedingly aware how young you are,” the figure said with a chuckle. 

Danny couldn’t hold back the shiver. The creature’s voice was bad enough when it was talking - the chuckle drained straight down his back. “I don’t-”

“Oh, no worries about what you want, or need, or anything.” It shook its cloaked head. “As I said, the title means little. You’ll be expected to do absolutely nothing. The realm had a ruler that was locked into a sarcophagus for near on a thousand years with no issues. But the title is yours, none-the-less.”

“I don’t want it?” Danny glanced at the door, thinking of getting up and just leaving. But something held him in place. The figure he was talking to was simply too powerful to run from. 

“It’s yours, regardless of your wishes. Now is when we get to that minor issue at hand I mentioned earlier, the reason I brought you in. See, you were doing a wonderful job being a figurehead for the ghostly realms the last six months. I was quite impressed with your lack of initiative to do things. I like that, in a ruler.”

“Thanks,” Danny said slowly.

It took another drink of coffee. “However, the Realms have decided that two rulers just isn’t a situation it wants to deal with. The heir being active and the Pariah locked away and useless. They have decided that enough is enough, and would like you to remedy the situation.”

“Remedy?”

“Yes. In fewer words: you need to obliterate Pariah Dark.”

Danny waited for a sign that this was some sort of joke. Nothing. Even though the powerful aura staining the air around the figure and the dread knotting in his stomach was making his mouth dry and throat clench, he found his voice enough to squeak out. “Who are you, anyways?”

“You know who I am,” the figure said. “You knew who I was before you even sat down.”

Danny swallowed hard.

“Now. You have a job to do.” Death leaned even further forwards. There was nothing under the hood that Danny could see - a black hole with a cloak. But still, the creature was giving him a huge, mirthless smile. “Young prince.”


	29. Heat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Jack worked a bit too hard, and Phantom comes to his aid.

Jack groaned as he walked up the stairs from the lab. It had been a long day, hunched over small parts, and nearly everything hurt. His legs, from being tensed and holding him on the too-tall stool. His back, from being leaned over. His head, from squinting through the magnifying glass at the tiny screws. His hands, from trying to manipulate small screwdrivers and soldering guns that had to be held firmly to work properly.

He dropped into the chair at the kitchen table, then instantly regretted it. The chair was hard and unforgiving, and it sent a sharp spike of pain up his spine. “Ow, ow, ow,” he whispered. He quickly turned his attention towards something to eat and drink, so he could collapse in his comfy chair.

If only anyone else was home. Then he could ignore the grumbling of his stomach and get someone else to worry about supper.

It took three tries to get out of the chair. “Eeech,” he breathed, walking over to the fridge and digging through it. “I should have stopped hours ago.” If Maddie were here, she never would have let him stay in that cramped position this long.

A leftover sandwich caught his eye. “Ooooh, perfect.” He snagged it, along with two cans of soda, and limped into the living room. 

His chair called to him, with its perfectly molded and supportive cushions. He dropped the sodas and sandwich on the coffee table and fell into the chair. He sighed and leaned back, allowing all his muscles to finally relax. It was several long minutes before he reached for one of the cans, popped it open, and downed the contents. The sandwich was next - quickly gone, and his stomach not yet full. Jack gazed towards the kitchen, wishing for something else to eat, but unwilling to move from his chair.

Flipping on the TV to a history-based channel, he let his head fall back and his eyes close. 

When he opened his eyes, hours had passed. Dark lurked through the windows, the TV was over-bright, and his muscles had transitioned from sore to stiff. Needing to use the bathroom, Jack leveraged himself out of his chair. He groaned in pain when his legs refused to work properly. He hobbled to the bathroom, debating between going back to his chair or heading up to his bed.

In the end, the idea walking up the stairs was simply too much. Chair it was. After relieving himself, Jack headed back to his chair, determined to put up the footrest, lean back, and sleep there for the night. In his single-minded quest to drop his sore body back into the chair, he completely missed the spot of cold.

He collapsed into the chair, listening to the gears ratchet as the footrest came up and the chair leaned back. He sighed, only belatedly thinking about getting something more to eat, and closed his eyes.

“You move like you’re seventy.”

Jack jerked awake, his body screamed in pain as he sat up. A ghost floated upside down in front of him. White hair. Green eyes. Black clothing. Phantom. “Go away,” he groaned, dropping back against his chair. “I don’t want to deal with your brand of nonsense today.”

“It’s tomorrow,” Phantom said unhelpfully. “Has been for a few minutes.”

“Even so.” Jack thought through the location of the different weapons in his living room. All of them were out of reach. And this particular spirit simply wasn’t worth the effort of getting up to find one of them. “I just want to be left alone.”

“Work too hard today?”

Jack didn’t bother to answer, closing his eyes and pretending to go back to sleep.

“Sheesh. Here’s the thanks I get for stopping by to see how you were doing.”

Jack cracked an eye open. Phantom had turned over and drifted until his feet were almost touching the ground. In the darkness of the night, the ghost almost looked solid, the objects behind him barely visible through his normally translucent body. “Nobody asked you to come, and so no thanks would be required.”

Phantom hummed. Then his eyes widened and he clapped his hands, rising off the ground a few inches. “I got you.”

“I don’t need getting,” Jack complained, but the ghost was already gone. Jack groaned and put an arm over his eyes. The spirit was part poltergeist, and Jack couldn’t even begin to dream of what sort of chaos was about to begin. Whatever it was, Jack wasn’t up for it. He could barely make it to the toilet to pee, much less hunt down ghosts - and Phantom’s unique brand of mayhem almost always involved other ghosts.

Then came the sound of the microwave and the scent of cooking food. Jack let his arm fall down to his chest and he stared in the direction of the kitchen. Soft lights moved around in the kitchen and clunking and clinking noises drifted through the doorway. 

“What is he doing?” Jack wondered. The TV droned on about something or other, but Jack’s attention was on the kitchen. He wasn’t concerned enough to get up; Phantom didn’t seem to hold stock in wanton destruction. The kitchen would likely survive the ghost’s presence. But he still kept a very close watch on the area.

Some ten minutes later, the ghost appeared in the doorway, a large platter in his hands and something blue folded over his arm. “Perfect medicine for a sore body,” he proclaimed as he set it down. 

Steam rose from a bowl of hot chili, the cheese already melted and oozing. Crackers sat on the platter next to it. A large glass of milk and the bottle of ibuprofen finished the tray. The folded blue thing turned out to be a heating pad. Jack stared at the meal. 

“The phrase you’re searching for is ‘thank you’,” Phantom said with a grin as he plugged in the heating pad and held it out.

Jack glanced into the spirit’s glowing eyes, taking the quickly warming pad. “Thanks,” he said.

The grin grew into a real smile, the corners of the green eyes creasing. “See? That wasn’t so hard.” Then the ghost glanced down at his wrist, despite the fact that there was no watch there. “I do have to be going,” he said, “but you need anything else?”

“I’m good,” Jack said.

The ghost vanished as quickly as he had arrived. Jack waited, a bit tense, until the last of the chill had drifted away. Then he relaxed, stuffing the heating pad behind his back and picking up the tray. The chili was delicious. 

Between the warmth against his back and the glowing heat in his belly, Jack started to feel normal again. He relaxed against his chair, let all the tension out of his muscles, and drifted back off to sleep.


	30. Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Introspective piece about Maddie.

Maddie prided herself on the pictures hanging on the stairway. Most of the rest of her house was in disarray - the couch was at least a decade too old, the table really should have been replaced two explosions ago, there were more shades of cream-colored paint splotched on the walls than on most paintings, and only half the doors in the house closed properly. For years, excess money had gone into their ghost hunting ‘hobby’ rather than non-emergency home upkeep. Even now that money wasn’t as tight, she couldn’t keep up with all the work that the old home needed. But the pictures on the stairs she could handle, and she loved them.

Every year, they had a family picture taken and Maddie hung it on the stairs. The first two near the bottom were just her and Jack - young and naive. The next three added a very young Jazz. The next fifteen had all four of them. 

There were now twenty pictures. Twenty different frames. Twenty blessed years. Her staircase was getting rather full.

Nearly every time she climbed the stairs, she touched each one, watching her kids grow before her eyes. Today she stopped at the last, staring at her kids. How they’d grown. How they’d changed. Jazz, now grown and leaving for college in a few months. Danny close behind. 

Perhaps someday soon she would dedicate a portion of her time towards their home. Open the wall between the living room and kitchen, like she and Jack had always talked about. Buy a new couch, one without so many stains. Redo the kitchen and pull it out of the seventies. 

But the pictures would stay. And maybe, someday, when there were twenty-five or thirty or more pictures in the stairwell, there might be new kids.


	31. Free Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Cute little bit about family bonding.

“I’m free!” Danny yelled, bursting out of his house. “FINALLY!”

Sam was waiting on the steps, having watched him run past. “You act like you were locked up for ages,” she said. “It was a couple hours.”

Danny stretched his arms wide. “I love the sun. I missed you!”

“Drama queen,” Sam muttered, levering herself off the steps and walking over to where Danny stood. “Burger?”

“Of course! My allowance is burning a hole in my pocket.” Danny twirled in a little circle, arms up, before laughing and falling into step beside his friend. “And a strawberry shake. Where’s Tucker?”

“Grounded.”

Danny’s nose wrinkled. “How did you come out of this smelling like roses? The whole thing was your idea. Tucker ended up grounded, I got experimented on…”

“You got experimented on?” Sam stopped.

“Just a little.” He waved his hand, dismissing the thought. “Nothing bad, really. I actually came up with the idea.”

Sam arched an eyebrow and started walking again. “ _You_?”

“They got so excited about the experiment they forgot about grounding me.” Danny grinned. “I’m not sure how many times I’ll be able to pull that one, though.” He shrugged. “It worked this time.”

Sam pressed her lips together. “Just be careful about what you let them do. I know they wouldn’t hurt you on purpose, but…” she trailed off with a shrug.

“I know, I know.” Danny stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Don’t ruin my wonderful day with sour thoughts.”

“Wonderful day? You got experimented on.” Sam grinned and jabbed him with her elbow. 

Danny laughed. “Whatever. So spill. How did you get out of this without a scratch?”

“Without a scratch?” Sam scowled. “You know my mom’s been trying to be more open to _alternative lifestyles_ , or whatever. I had to suffer through the very real nightmare of my mother and I, sitting at a table, and her listening to my side of the story, believing me, and actually going to bat for me.” She shuddered. 

“That sounds… horrible,” Danny said, his voice sarcastic.

“Oh, believe me,” Sam said, “I never thought I’d be trailing behind my mother as she stormed up to the principal to demand more access for the… what-did-she-call-it… the lah-gee-bee-ah group I’m starting up.”

“Lah-gee-bee-ah?” 

“LGBT.” Sam curled her fingers around the straps of her backpack. “She’s got no clue, honestly, but she went on some sort of rant about being proud of me for protesting injustice and… _whatever_.”

Danny grinned. “Lah-gee-bee-ah.”

“Shut it. I had to hear her say it enough times.” Her shoulders crept up towards her ears. “Then, after talking the principal out of suspending me for two days and giving me a few detentions instead, she took me shopping. Said I needed a proper protesting outfit.”

“Is it a rainbow dress?” Danny said with a snicker.

“ _Yes_ ,” Sam said miserably, hunching even further over, her voice dropping to a whisper. “And she bought herself one that matched.”

Danny’s snicker grew into a full-on laugh. “Imagine your mom, coming to the next rally you set up, in a _matching outfit_.” Tears traced down his cheeks from laughing so hard.

Despite her sour thoughts, Sam couldn’t help but smile just a little at Danny’s laughter. But the boy couldn’t laugh at her that much without some sort of comeuppance. “And maybe your dad will show up dressed in a Phantom costume.”

Danny stopped laughing instantly. “You don’t say something like that aloud,” he hissed. “ _Ever_.”

“We’d be a pair. Start a protest, then hide from our parents.” 

A small smile crept back on Danny’s face. “Your mom waving a lah-gee-bee-ah flag and my dad chasing nonexistent ghosts around the street.”

Sam sighed and walked quietly for a few minutes. “I kind of liked it better when I could hate my mother from a distance.”

“Yeah,” Danny said. He snagged her hand from the strap of her backpack and wove his fingers through hers. “And I kinda liked it better when my parents didn’t get on my back about every stupid decision Phantom makes.” He wrinkled his nose. “I apparently make a lot of them.”

Sam squeezed his fingers, walking close enough that she could feel the odd little tingle that constantly surrounded him. “But I wouldn’t want to go back,” she admitted.

“Me neither.” Danny tugged her suddenly into an alley. “Should we go spring Tucker from his solo-grounding?” Light flashed around him. “Take him for a surreptitious burger run?”

Sam laughed and allowed herself to be picked up off the ground. “Sounds like fun.”


End file.
